Class strategies and British Communism 1920-1991

This paper treats the history of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) as the playing out of three distinct strategies for the creation of socialism. These were not merely political strategies, programmes of action towards a distinct goal, expressed on the level of ideas, and subject to analysis through the changing public language of the party. They were also class strategies. Each embodied a different notion of who was to achieve socialism, how they would progress, and who would benefit. The moments in which any one strategy was ascendant were not of equal duration, but each was of lasting importance. The first strategy was a notion of proletarian power, which can be seen to have originated in the conduct of the pre-war syndicalists and the shop stewards' movement, but which also possessed a strong similarity to ideas of soviet or workers' council democracy. This can be seen to have dominated the perspective of the party in the first half-decade of its existence. The second strategy was an idea of state Socialism, in which the function of a working-class movement was to work with radical intellectuals and other potential allies in using the state to re-order society. This policy had its links to developments in late 1920s Russia. The British working class was supposed to ally with a new class of Russian leaders. The third class strategy was a politics of alliance between workers and the so-called 'progressive bourgeoisie' in Britain. This latter politics is seen to have dominated the party's strategies from 1935 to its demise, in the period of the Popular Front and then the 'British Road to Socialism'. Each strategy had different practical implications for activists, because each implied a different notion of who was should be contacted as potential allies or recruits. The working out of these different politics is traced through key moments, including the party's industrial policy in the 1920s, anti-fascist politics in the 1930s, and electoral work in the 1950s and beyond.

The purpose of this paper is not merely to outline the progress between these three periods, but to relate in a certain way to the published material which tells already tells the story of British Communism. The last dozen years have witnessed a proliferation of books and articles taking as their subject the history of the Communist of the Party of Great Britain. Yet quantity does not always imply quality. The majority approach has been to concentrate simply upon the lives of rank-and-file Communist militants. The work of such authors as Noreen Branson, Nina Fishman, Kevin Morgan, Willie Thompson and Andrew Thorpe has generated an impression of well-meaning activists who possessed no interests beyond those of the local trade union movement. The majority account runs perilously close to replicating the self-description provided by leading members of the Communist Party of Great Britain at certain times. It relies on omissions of record, and ignores the contemporary perspectives of non-Communist critics of the British Communists within the British labour movement. The majority account is at times politically and historically naïve. It would be wrong, however, to exaggerate the consistency of this approach. Andrew Thorpe's argument is that the British Party was rarely controlled from Moscow. The weapons of coercion were not effective in themselves, nor were they sufficient to force the CPGB over sustained periods, to do what it did not wish. Democratic centralism was weaker the further it was stretched. If individual Communists accepted the changing politics of the international line, then they did so voluntarily. Such Communists as Tom Bell seriously believed that Russia was 'the land of proletarian freedom'. They were not bought or coerced, they chose to obey. Thorpe's sophisticated exploration of the limited autonomy of British Communists can be located within the same category of argument as that of Nina Fishman. Yet the latter author takes a much less nuanced and more combative position, arguing as she does for a self-declared 'revisionist' perspective. 'My approach to writing party history became revisionist because I soon found that party members did not conform to the stereotype of either official Communist heroics or ritual Labour witch-hunts. I have had the audacity to transcend the conventional polarities in the hope of contributing to a revisionist approach to British Communism.'

The problem with Fishman's account is that in placing local experience before the national, she gives a one-sided impression of what the Communist Party existed to do. In her history, the CPGB appears almost as 'a society of great friends'. Yet for most of its existence, the party saw itself as a cadre organisation, a party of revolutionary socialists. As L. J. Macfarlane argued, over thirty years ago, 'The Communist Party was first and foremost a Marxist party.' The CPGB should not be judged primarily in terms of the success of its industrial militants in building a base for themselves in the factories, but rather in terms of the goals which the party set itself. Did the Communists build a mass revolutionary party, and if not, then why not? This paper therefore draws on a different historical tradition, embodied in the older work of James Hinton and Richard Hyman, Brian Pearce and Michael Woodhouse, in addition to more recent research published by John McIlory and Glyn Powell among others, in arguing for a sceptical, outsider's view of Communist Party life.

Ourselves alone

The first period under discussion runs from the formation of the Communist Party in the years following the first world war through to 1926 and the General Strike. Given that Britain's rulers escaped the First World War with their political culture and hegemony both relatively intact, a party espousing the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism was necessarily going to be marginal. Although the crises of the early 1930s and the war years did to some extent destabilise the established political elites, social revolution in Britain on the model of Russia in 1917 was not an immediate possibility. Communists operated within a well-established Labour movement, in a matrix of district and constituency Labour Parties, Trade Union branches and Co-operative societies. For much of the early period of the Communist Party's existence, British Communists attempted to implement a United Front strategy towards Labour and the Trade Unions, allying themselves with left-wingers within the movement and seeking to affiliate the CPGB to the Labour Party. Through these years, the majority of Communist activists held to a notion of working-class power, according to which socialism could only be created by the action of confident, independent, proletarian movement. If the working class was to achieve a transition from capitalism to socialism, then the class must act alone. There were undoubtedly moments when this belief was crudely argued. Yet we should start by recognising that several leading members of the party had adopted a politics at the cutting-edge of post-war socialist theory. While the Russian Communists had been educated by a huge mass movement, string enough to sweep them into power, the formative experience upon which the British Communists drew - which was the war-time shop stewards movement - had been less impressive in its extent. Although the politics of the new party were limited, we should recognise the extent to which the Communists attempt to extend themselves beyond the limits of previous British socialism, which had tended to lose itself in a morass of political lethargy, one-upmanship and sectarianism. According to Walter Kendall, 'The Communist Party absorbed within its framework practically the whole pre-existing revolutionary movement and leaders. This movement and its participants, whatever its other faults, was at least, self-acting, autonomous, a genuine endeavour to come to grips with the problem of British reality.'

The area where this early, class politics was most evident was in the workplace. Such leading Communists as J. T. Murphy, Tom Bell and Arthur MacManus joined the party from backgrounds as industrial militants. Consequently, early Communist propaganda insisted that revolutionaries had more in common with shop stewards or rank-and-file workers in trade unions than they did with the union full-timers. The motto was the same as it had been in Glasgow during the war, 'We will support the officials just as long as they rightly represent the workers, but will act independently immediately they misrepresent them.' Communist propaganda made routine attacks on 'Labour leaders ... so obsessed with the ideas of uniting all classes and speaking of the interests of the "community as a whole" that they fail to defend the workers they represent.'

Around them [are] gathered all the doctrinaire intellectualism with their utopian theories, who have been attracted to the labour movement. With them too, will be the weak vacillating elements on the fringes of the working-class movement. All these will make their appeals and address their little questions and notes of censure to the capitalist class and bid the workers to be reasonable.

While the middle class preached reason, working-class politics meant revolt. One early flashpoint came in April 1921. A Triple Alliance of the Miners' union, the Transport Workers and the Railwaymen promised to fight together against wage cuts and redundancies. When the miners came out on strike, the other unions failed to support them. The CPGB blamed Jimmy Thomas, leader of the National Union of Railwaymen for pulling the plug. A cartoon by Will Hope in The Communist showed Thomas as Judas at the Last Supper. Thomas sued the paper, but the party's reputation among industrial workers was made.

We should not exaggerate the quality or the evenness of the CPGB's early politics. In his work on the local culture of British Communism, Stuart Macintyre has shown how this belief could be argued crudely. He suggests that in the early 1920s, the party was not just working-class in composition, but often 'workerist' as well, deliberately rejecting the backing of middle-class socialists, or any kind of theory, which was associated with intellectualism. Claiming to uphold a proletarian common sense, the leadership actually disarmed the membership, limiting the development of an authentic Marxist politics. Such workerism could be combined with an equally destructive hyper-activism, a trait which survived beyond the early 1920s. Ernie Trory was attacked by members of Brighton branch for spending too much time in pubs. C. H. ('Bob') Darke felt that his family life 'was not all that was expected of a Communist.' Edward Upward's semi-autobiographical The Spiral Ascent, describes its hero giving up writing, breaking his friendship with his Oxford contemporaries, and throwing himself wholeheartedly into party work. Paper sales, canvassing, meetings, even Upward's breaks and lunchtimes were devoted to fund-raising and arguing along political lines.

The independent class politics of the early CPGB began to break down under the weight of its own contradictions, plus the pressure of outside events. These included the stalling of the global revolutionary wave of 1917-1921, the consequent failure of the British Communists to achieve break-through, and the parallel isolation of the Russian Revolution. By 1920 or 1921, the leaders of the Communist International (Comintern) had ceased their former advice that the Western Communists should prepare for power. Now the local parties were urged to concentrate on winning the battle of ideas, hoping that a second chance would eventually come their way. The defeat of the revolutionary wave continued. Factories in Britain endured mass-layoffs. A harsh joke went round to the effect that the shop stewards of 1914-18 were now to be found leading unemployed workers. Meanwhile, the nature of Russian society changed. The Russian party became bureaucratised, while its relationship with the western capitalist powers also changed. Under the leadership of Zinoviev, the quality of advice from the Comintern diminished, and the CPGB suffered.
The slow attrition of the original politics of the British Communist Party can be traced through a series of manoeuvres, adopted by the party. These included the programme of 'Bolshevisation' begun by Arthur MacManus, Harry Pollitt and Rajani Palme Dutt, the removal of a first generation of CP leaders, and the launch of the Anglo-Russian Committee of trade unionists. Many of these plans were designed to improve the level of political discussion within the party, others were conceived as initiatives to tie the leaders of the British trade unions to their counterparts in Moscow. However well-meant, their effect was to blur the previous reliance of CPGB activists on their own authority within the class.

The Anglo-Russian Committee was designed as a means to bring together British and Soviet trade union leaders, although the goal of this process was not made clear. The plan was launched from Russia, at the behest of the International. Under the leadership of Zinoviev, the International was searching for schemes that would cut short the process of transition that had required a revolution in Russia. The sixth plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) described the Committee as 'a new stage in the history of the international trade union movement ... it demonstrates the practical possibility of creating a unified International, and of a common struggle of workers of different political tendencies against reaction, fascism, and the capitalist offensive.' Rajani Palme Dutt used the vehicle of the CPGB's Labour Monthly to present the TUC General Council as 'a leadership which is approaching more and more full recognition of the class struggle.' The chief problem with the Anglo-Russian Committee was that it encouraged local Communist militants to see the British trade union bureaucracy as a natural ally in the struggle. Pearce and Woodhouse argue convincingly that its formation hindered the party during the great days of the General Strike. The CPGB slogan 'All power to the General Council' exaggerated the potential of the Trade Union Congress as a revolutionary body, it also tended to sow illusions in the left-wing leaders on the TUC General Council.

The General Strike which finally broke out in May 1926 saw British society divided along class lines. Two and a half million workers were on strike. Over 1200 Communists were arrested for taking part in the movement. Yet the leaders called an end to the dispute, after only nine days. After the strike ended, the CPGB statement, 'Stand by the Miners!', condemned the TUC betrayal as 'the greatest crime that has ever been permitted, not only against the miners, but against the working class of Britain and the whole world.' The harsh words were merited, the left-wing of the TUC had indeed forced an unnecessary defeat upon the miners. As for the party, though, had the Communists done enough?

Even in 1926, voices were raised criticising the leaders of the Communist Party. The main charge was that the party had failed to prepare its membership and its periphery in advance, for the eventual betrayal that came. The leading spokesmen of the Communist International now carried out a rapid about-turn of their own. In 1925, their message had been that the British Party should subordinate its criticisms of the trade union leadership, for the sake of establishing Anglo-Russian friendship. The year after, following the defeat of the General Strike, such leading Russian Communists as Zinoviev criticised the CPGB for its failure to expose the TUC in advance. Tom Bell spoke on behalf of the British leadership at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in June 1926.

There is a criticism from some quarters that our Party has not properly understood the left wing, that we have not criticised it and that we have been under illusions as to the role the left wing would play in times of crisis. As a matter of fact the Party discussed this question of the left last year and issued a manifesto explaining that the left wing and the leftists, are always to be found hesitant, timid, hysterical, weak and cowardly, when face to face with a real crisis. Our Party have clearly understood that in our campaign for promoting the Minority Movement, these left wing leaders would in all probability betray us in a crisis.

Such a defence breaks down against the fact that leading Communists, one after another, expressed their surprise at the defeat of the strike. Peter Kerrigan, one of the leaders of the Glasgow strike committee admitted to having 'never thought' that the strike might be called off. For D. A. Wilson a Communist on Bradford Trades Council, the news was also 'a surprise'. Even national figures, such as J. T. Murphy, Tommy Jackson and George Hardy of the Communist-led Minority Movement, recorded their astonishment. If Bell had wished to have the best of the argument, he should rather have criticised the leaders of the Communist International for giving the British Party bad advice. It was not the fault of the CPGB that the Anglo-Russian initiative had always been misconceived. Yet in the hierarchical world of the International, such plain-speaking would not have been welcome.

Mother Russia

In the first years following its foundation, the effective policy of the CPGB had been to seek socialism primarily through the independent action of the British working class. Such an action was not conceived as narrowly as it might sound. It already implied a certain degree of practical unity between revolutionaries within the British working-class movement and reformists, represented as they were by the mainstream of trade union and Labour Party opinion. Indeed the advocates of such strategies as the Anglo-Russian Committee were able to play on this practical desire for unity, persuading rank-and-file British Communists to hang back from the scepticism which they usually expressed in their attitudes towards the trade union leaders. Following the terrible defeat of 1926, the party adopted a new idea of how to establish socialism. Once again, it was the Communist International which was decisive in the change of line. The International declared that the preceding period of capitalist stabilisation was over. As in the crisis years of 1914-20, the capitalist system was again moving towards an era of naked class struggle. In these circumstances, the Social Democratic parties could be expected to perform a role as the last ditch defenders of capitalist rule. Labour-type parties throughout the world were dubbed 'Social Fascist', and the Communist parties were instructed to break from the Social Democratic unions and create 'Red' fighting unions in their place. From the politics of the new line, it followed that the greatest threat facing the labour movement was the continued success of the Labour Party. Any labour leader could only act in a fascist manner - criticising the Soviet Union, supervising the transition away from democracy. To argue against anyone except the Labour Party, was to fall into the trap of supporting the 'lesser evil'.

This new line of 'Class against Class' seemed persuasive to many British Communists because it fitted - to some extent - with their own experiences. In the years after 1926, the number of strikes fell markedly. This trend seemed to demonstrate the impotence of the reformist-led trade unions. The Labour Party was able to govern for two years from 1929, before collapsing at the onset of depression. Ramsay Macdonald's decision to leave the Labour Party and form a National Government in its place proved to the Communists that Labourism was on its last legs. For all these reasons, leading British Communists were able to persuade the rank-and-file that there was no prospect of practical co-operation between members of the Labour Party and Communists. Yet the class politics of this new period were complicated. Rather than being thrown on their own resources, as it might appear, Communist militants were encouraged to develop in practice a new form of unity - between themselves and the leaders of the Soviet 'workers' state'.

The nature of this practical alliance can be seen in the behaviour of leading British Communists. A few historians, including Mike Squires and Andrew Thorpe, have made the case that the ultra-left politics adopted by the British Communist Party after 1926 were formulated by local leaders, according to local sentiment, as local conditions determined. There is a limited truth to this argument, in the sense that a small group of younger Communists were able to use the reversal of line as a means of securing leadership positions in the CPGB, against the older generation of Bell, MacManus and Murphy. The young Turks included Harry Pollitt, the party's new General Secretary and Rajani Palme Dutt, editor of Labour Monthly. Yet the idea that every single party in the Communist International just happened by sheer chance to flip left all at the same time, as a result of local sentiment, and always according to the independent wishes of the local rank-and-file is so inherently implausible that we can rule it out. Any localist explanation would also makes it much harder to explain the actual conduct of the CPGB leadership at this time.

Even after adopting 'Class Against Class', the CPGB came in for frequent criticism from the leaders of the International. The main accusation was that the party had failed to convert itself into a properly monolithic organisation. A minority of Communists continued to stand out against the sectarianism of the new period, including the most outstanding advocate of United Front politics in the party, Wal Hannington, the leader of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement. It was also pointed out that in the new period, the CPGB had failed to grew. Indeed from a high-point of some 10,000 members in 1926, the party shrunk to around 2,000 four years later. In October 1931, the Comintern Secretariat instructed the London comrades to 'Strengthen party faction in [the] NUWM eliminating [its] separation and deviation from party line especially conciliatory attitude to the ILP.' During the following two years, the Central Committee of the British party made a series of objections to the way in which Wal Hannington ran the Unemployed Workers' Movement. The suggestion was that Communists in the NUWM were too willing to criticise the National Government, when they should turn their real fire on the class traitors among the Labour opposition.' Hannington was eventually forced off the party's Central Committee in 1933.

Despite cracking down on all expressions of independent thinking, the British Communists failed to grow to any size. The continuing weakness of the Communist Party embarrassed its leaders before Moscow. The leaders of the Communist International decided to establish a special commission to investigate the state of the British party. Although their decision can only be seen as a criticism of the weakness of the local leadership, the British Communists did not hesitate to speak up for their own condemnation. Harry Pollitt addressed a December 1931 meeting of the ECCI to explain the reasons for establishing a Commission.

In view of the very favourable objective situation in England, there was felt in the International a serious alarm at the failure of the party to playa decisive role in the struggles and its failure to develop the mass movement, and this alarm was accentuated into great apprehension on the very weak results which the Party obtained in the most recent general election.

From the minutes of the meetings which followed, all filed and duly sent back to Moscow, it appears that few new suggestions were made beyond self-abasement. The new line had been established in Moscow, therefore it had to work. Pollitt told a meeting of the party's Political Bureau in January 1932, 'We have to face up to the fact that the resolutions passed by the party have remained paper resolutions ... not only is the party isolated from the masses, but the leadership is isolated from the party.' Two days later, he castigated the Central Committee, telling its members that they had 'assist[ed] in the development of the "lesser evil" idea ... the main danger to the working class is the Labour Party.'

Given the separation that then existed between the Communist Party and the overwhelming mass of the workers, it is only natural that the leadership party should have attempted to fill this gap by reminding the membership repeatedly of the mighty friend they had in Russia. The 1929 Congress of the CPGB accused the League of Nations and the Labour Government of 'unifying the war plans of the imperialists against the Soviet Union.' The April 1932 issue of Communist Review called for 'the building of Soviet ships in the British dockyards, for utilisation of the factories of this country on orders for the acceleration of the industrialisation of the Soviet Union, [to] integrate the demand of the workers for work with defence of the Soviet Union'. The idea of this writer was to bind together the struggle for work in Britain to the fate of the Soviet Union 'until the working class of this country feels and realises more and more that its fate and the fate of the Soviet Union are inseparable.'

Why should any of this matter? One of the party's historians, Noreen Branson, attempted to answer this question in the aftermath of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. She explained the pro-Soviet attitudes of ordinary Communists in terms of a collective failure of understanding. British Communists had joined a workers' party, but:

What party members did not fully appreciate was that, in countries like the Soviet Union, and its post-war European neighbours, this was no longer the case. From the late 1920s onwards, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had become the party which people joined if they wanted to further their careers. Here the party was closely intertwined with the state machine, a power structure which had become more and more ... bureaucratic. 'Soviets' were no longer a system of 'rule from below'.

The only problem with this account is that it does not go far enough. In the mid-1920s, the Soviet Union had indeed been a centralised state. Ten years later, though, the degeneration of the revolution was much more complete. Millions disappeared in Stalin's terror, whole peoples were allowed to starve to death. Russia in the 1930s was a tyrannical regime, whose rulers were allowed to enjoy extraordinary, privileged life styles, placing them in a similar situation to the rulers of the West. There was no longer any common experience linking their lives to the workers' movement in Britain or elsewhere. To campaign for a form of socialism that was to be achieved at Stalin's behest, meant arguing for a different kind of class politics to the early politics of the CPGB, a more managed and bureaucratic form.

We can see therefore that the increasingly-significant alliance between the leading circles of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Russian ruling class contributed to the isolation of the party. This strategy was manifested in the adoption of a shrill and ultra-left politics, which isolated the Communists from the working class. Even when the party was able to hold back from such political adventurism, the impact of the party's pro-Sovietism continued to be felt. It was felt in the attitude of the Communism leadership towards the rank-and-file. The latter were treated as a stage army, to be ordered about at whim. The party's critics accused it of adopting an 'about turn' politics, pointing either rightwards or to the left. The results of the lack of democracy and independence within the party were evident in the CPGB's falling membership figures. They expressed themselves in the intra-party campaign against Hannington and the NUWM. The corrosive politics of this new politics were also felt in the party's unwillingness to contribute to the anti-fascist campaign.
The first fully-fledged British fascist party, Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, was established in 1931, after its leader visited Benito Mussolini in Italy. Over the next three years, the party grew rapidly, reaching a peak of 50,000 members in spring 1934. Yet the members Communist Party initially refrained from confronting Mosley's thugs on the streets. Through the winter of 1933-34, ad hoc anti-fascist alliances were established in local areas, with the involvement of Labour left-wingers and members of the Independent Labour Party, but not yet active Communists. Examples include the Anti-Fascist League on Tyneside and the Red Shirts in Oxford. The reason for the initial lethargy of the Communist Party was simple. As late as 1934, the party leadership continued to follow the line of 'class against class'. Local Communists were still urged to turn their fire - not on Mosley - but on Labour.

It was only by the middle of the 1930s that the British Communist Party was ready to throw itself wholeheartedly into the anti-fascist struggle, first at Olympia, and then at Cable Street. Eventually, this was an important and successful campaign, and one which did more than anything to establish the CPGB as a mass party. By the time of Cable Street, however, the party had already undergone one further change of line. The adoption of Popular Front in politics in 1935 was a permanent and decisive step away from the open, revolutionary Marxism of the party's first years. Further changes of line might happen, but wherever they led, the strategic impulses of the British Communist Party were now in place. The politics of the early or late 1920s could be amended. The politics of the Popular Front were for life.

The broad democratic alliance

In 1935, the politics of the Communist International went through one further, and decisive revolution. The rise of fascism was a challenge to the left, whose militants became Hitler's first victims. The Comintern also faced the task of explaining why it was that the members of the German Communist Party had refrained from co-operating with the Socialists to stop Hitler, preferring to target their fire on the social-democratic left. This policy of identifying potential allies as 'social fascists' was widely identified as a prime cause of the defeat. In 1934, French Communists began to explore the idea of unity with the moderate left. Next this process was expanded to include even right-wing elements, the liberal parties and some conservative forces. The broadest possible alliance was agreed - up to the fringes of fascism itself. The turn to the Popular Front was driven by the strategic threat to the USSR posed by Hitler. The policy may have reflected pressures from national sections of the Comintern, but such demands were secondary in the minds of those who formulated it.
In Britain, the new line manifested itself in a new politics. Once again, we can describe the result as a sort of synthesis, and alliance between the working-class movement and the forces of mainstream, middle-class opinion. Socialism was to be achieved on the terms of the latter. The years of the Popular Front were to witness a long succession of conferences and similar gatherings at which the CP could promote the fruits of the campaign. One of the first such events was a Congress of Peace and Friendship with the USSR, held in London in December 1935, and attended by some 773 delegates claiming to represent more than a million and a half people. The speakers listed included Lord Listowel, the MPs Roberth Boothby, Vyvyan Adams and F. Seymour Cocks, Sidney Webb, Viscount Hastings, Lord Marley, Dr. Maude Royden and Professor Blackett. One speaker, Mr. Marshall, introduced as a 'capitalist', begged for more trade with Russia. Sidney Webb explained that 'there was no employment amongst actors in the USSR'. Dr. Royden, a lay Christian preacher, expressed her surprise at being invited to speak in such distinguished company, before giving the official endorsement of the Anglican church to Stalin's experiment. 'We Christians see realised in actual fact in Russia, several of the most important teachings of our Master, in whose realisation in this country we have almost ceased to believe.'

It is perhaps worth asking why such middle-class fellow-travellers felt a need to identify with Soviet Communism? David Caute argues that the intellectuals belonged to an elitist tradition which predated 1917 and perhaps even 1789. They believed in the Enlightenment and rationality, in saving people who were to weak to save themselves. They compared themselves to Stalin, seeing him as a fellow planner, an administrator, rather than a thinker or an activist. They did not desire Communism in their own states.

The two best-known figures associated with the Popular Front in Britain were W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender. Auden was influenced at different times by Freud and Christianity as well as the ideas of Karl Marx. On his departure for Spain in December 1936, he wrote to an old teacher, extolling the need for individual acts of conscience in the face of a powerful enemy, but also admitting some confusion as to what he should expect on his journey of self-discovery. 'I feel I ought to go; but O I do hope that there are not too many surrealists there.' At the same time, Stephen Spender was travelling on his own route towards Marxism. His Forward from Liberalism (1937), defended Communism as the means to achieve the supremacy of aesthetics. 'The final aim of the civilised man must be an unpolitical age, where conditions of peace and security are conducive to a classical art, rooted not in a small oligarchy, but in the lives of the whole people.' Hugh MacDiarmid's Third Hymn to Lenin disparaged such fair-weather comrades, 'Michael Roberts and All Angels! Auden, Spender these bhoyos / All yellow twicers; not one of them / With a tithe of Carlisle's courage and integrity / Unlike these pseudos I am of, not for the working class.'

The Communist Party's adoption of this milieu was a strategic adaptation towards a layer of people whose politics were to the right even of the Labour mainstream. The character of the new politics can be seen in the individuals chosen to lead the CPGB's major campaigns. The Popular Front campaign to Aid Spain was headed by the Duchess of Atholl, a Scottish landowner, and a former advocate of British military intervention against Bolshevism. At the 1937 Labour Party Congress, Herbert Morrison used this fact to launch a withering condemnation of CPGB double-standards, 'Would Mr. Pollitt appear on a platform with socialist, working-class Trotsky? He would not. If some of the leaders of the POUM in Spain, a working-class party, came to London, and the ILP wanted another United Front platform with them and Mr. Pollitt, Mr. Pollitt would not appear. But Mr. Pollitt will appear with the Duchess of Athol.' Morrison was of course guilty of his own double standards. Yet it was the fault of the Communist leaders that he was able to make fun of them in this way.

The Popular Front was not a tactical decision, which could later be unmade, rather it was a permanent shift of emphasis, which was to remain constant through the later history of the party. More turns would come, to the left (1939-1941, 1947-1951, 1970-1974) or to the right (1941-1945, 1974-1979), but through all of them, the party held fast to the notion that most profitable area in which to operate was a milieu of middle-class, moderate socialists. Even if Noreen Branson's interpretation of the Popular Front is unduly positive, she does at least capture the significance of the new line. Communist strategy was transformed:

Extra-parliamentary action ceased to be seen as an alternative to parliamentary action; on the contrary, it was realised that the way forward must involve a combination of the two. The object must be to transform and democratise the state machine, and to change the parliamentary system, not to 'replace' it. So began work on a different concept: that of the British road to socialism.

Later examples of the continued influence of this politics include the adoption of a postwar party programme, which explicitly ruled out the possibility of any working-class seizure of power; the conversion to a parliamentary strategy; the continued attempt to win local seats in by-elections through the 1950s and 1960s, even as this strategy failed to bear fruit; and the support of the Labour government in 1974-79, against its many shop-floor critics; the adoption of a new tactic of seeking a 'broad, democratic alliance' in the 1970s and 1980s; the rejection of trade union struggles in the 1980s, including the miners' strike; the championing of Charter 88, as the means to accomplish democratic change in Britain.
The conversion to Popular Front politics did not always go unchallenged. For example, in the late 1940s, a diverse coalition of local activists gathered together in criticism of the party's adoption of middle-class values. At the 1946 party conference, Eric Heffer moved a motion complaining that 'the perspective of proletarian revolution has been abandoned.' Edward and Hilda Upward left at much the same time complaining of the lack of vigour and inspiration at the new line. A letter appeared from the Australian Communist Party appeared in World News and Views, accusing the CPGB of betraying Leninism. Such criticism were but a prelude to the annus horribilis of 1956, and indeed to the greater fractiousness of the 1960s, when for the first time, the Communist Party of Great Britain was faced with significant, rival parties outside and to the left. To do full justice to any of these events, would take us beyond the story of British Communism. It is enough to emphasise again the main point: the class strategies of the CPGB were profoundly different after 1935.

Conclusion

This paper has identified three distinct stages in the history of the Communist Party, a period where independent working-class socialism was adopted, a second period where the interests of the British working-class movement were strategically tied to the fate of the revolution in Russia, a third period where the politics of working-class agency were dropped in favour of a 'people's democracy', in which all classes could take, but the professional middle-classes would make all the decisions. This last stage was decisive in the history of the party. In the 1970s and 1980s, a final generation of middle-class Communists were attracted by the party's lack of theoretical perspectives and low level of commitment, which made it amenable to the theoretically inclined. This generation later constituted the Eurocommunist, Marxism Today majority which dissolved the party in the last, traumatic months of 1990-91. By then, though, the party had already been transformed from the one which the founders had known. Membership, strategy, style, goals, all were changed.