Back الحزب الشيوعي في بريطانيا العظمى Arabic Partíu Comunista de Gran Bretaña AST Комунистическа партия на Великобритания Bulgarian Partit Comunista de la Gran Bretanya Catalan Plaid Gomiwnyddol Prydain Fawr Welsh Communist Party of Great Britain Danish Communist Party of Great Britain German Komunisma Partio de Granda Britio Esperanto Partido Comunista de Gran Bretaña Spanish Suurbritannia Kommunistlik Partei Estonian

Communist Party of Great Britain

This article is about the organisation active from 1920 to 1991. For other British communist organisations, see Communist Party of Great Britain (disambiguation).

Communist Party of Great Britain
AbbreviationCPGB
General Secretary
Founded31 July 1920[1]
Dissolved23 November 1991[2]
Merger of
Succeeded by
HeadquartersMarx House, Covent Garden, London[5][6]
Newspaper
Student wingCommunist Students
Youth wingYoung Communist League (YCL)[7]
Membership
  • 60,000 (at peak; 1945)[8]
  • 4,742 (at dissolution; 1991)[9]
Ideology
Political positionFar-left
International affiliationComintern
Channel Islands AffiliatesJersey Communist Party
Communist Party of Guernsey

The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups.[10] Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB founded the Daily Worker (renamed the Morning Star in 1966). In 1936, members of the party were present at the Battle of Cable Street, helping organise resistance against the British Union of Fascists. In the Spanish Civil War, the CPGB worked with the USSR to create the British Battalion of the International Brigades,[11] which party activist Bill Alexander commanded.[12]

In World War II, the CPGB followed the Comintern position, opposing or supporting the war in line with the involvement of the USSR.[13] By the end of World War II, CPGB membership had nearly tripled and the party reached the height of its popularity. Many key CPGB members served as leaders of Britain's trade union movement, including most notably Jessie Eden, David Ivon Jones, Abraham Lazarus, Ken Gill, Clem Beckett, GCT Giles, Mike Hicks, and Thora Silverthorne.

The CPGB's position on racial equality and anti-colonialism attracted many black activists to the party, including Trevor Carter, Charlie Hutchison, Dorothy Kuya, Billy Strachan, Peter Blackman, George Powe, Henry Gunter, Len Johnson, and Claudia Jones, who founded London's Notting Hill Carnival. In 1956, the CPGB experienced a significant loss of members due to its support of the Soviet military intervention in Hungary. In the 1960s, CPGB activists supported Vietnamese communists fighting in the Vietnam War. In 1984, the leader of the CPGB's youth wing, Mark Ashton, founded Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.

In 1975, reformers within the CPGB wanted the party to recognise gay liberation in its policy platform. At the 34th National Congress in 1975, the Birmingham Central branch and the Norwood and Clapham branches (both in London) proposed resolutions to the lack of recognition of gay liberation.[14] The main focuses of these proposals were equal rights in the public sphere, and more awareness and tolerance within the party. Specifically, the Norwood and Clapham branches also pushed for the party to get involved with gay activism.[14] There were many more resolutions proposed, however they were not added to the CPGB policy at the 34th National Congress, and the issue was put on hold until further discussion could take place.[14]

Subsequently, the policy change discussion drafted by the Birmingham Central branch was put on the agenda for the executive committee meeting on the 11th and 12th September, 1976.[14] The CPGB acknowledged that it would take more than just reform within the party to fully achieve gay liberation.[14] However, the CPGB ended up agreeing to implement the proposals, encouraging gay members to be out about their sexuality, and setting up a Gay Advisory Committee.[14] The CPGB agreeing to implement the proposals of the Birmingham Central branch made the party look more appealing to LGBT Britons and reflected on recruitment.[15] Yet, gay members of the CPGB still faced some resistance and pushback from other party members when it came to the "politicisation of homosexuality" within the party.[15]

From 1956 until the late 1970s, the party was funded by the Soviet Union.[10][16] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the party's Eurocommunist leadership disbanded the party, establishing the Democratic Left. In 1988 the anti-Eurocommunist faction launched the Communist Party of Britain, which still exists today.

  1. ^ Simkin, John (August 2014). "The Communist Party of Great Britain". spartacus-educational.com. Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 31 August 2015.
  2. ^ "British communists propose name change". Herald-Journal. 23 November 1991. Retrieved 9 February 2010.
  3. ^ Barberis, Peter/McHugh, John/Tyldesley, Mike. Encyclopedia of British and Irish political organizations : parties, groups and movements of the 20th century. New York City/London: Continuum, 2001. 149
  4. ^ Collette, Christine/Leybourn, Keith. Modern Britain since 1979 a reader. London/New York City: I.B. Tauris, 2003. p. 2
  5. ^ Wheeler, Brian (13 June 2012). "What happened to the Communist Party of Great Britain's millions?". BBC.
  6. ^ "The rise and fall of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1928–1983". rarehistoricalphotos.com. Rare Historical Photos. 20 March 2018.
  7. ^ Linehan, Thomas (October 2010). Communism in Britain, 1920–39: From the cradle to the grave. Manchester University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1vwmdq7. ISBN 978-0-7190-7140-9.
  8. ^ Wheeler, Brian. What happened to the Communist Party of Great Britain's millions?, BBC News, London, published 13 June 2012, retrieved 16 July 2015
  9. ^ "1988–97 Re-establishing the Party". Archived from the original on 23 September 2017. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
  10. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference wheeler was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Farman, Chris; Rose, Valery; Woolley, Lis (2015). No Other Way: Oxfordshire and the Spanish Civil War 1936–39. London: Oxford International Brigade Memorial Committee. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-907464-45-4.
  12. ^ Meddick, Simon; Payne, Liz; Katz, Phil (2020). Red Lives: Communists and the Struggle for Socialism. UK: Manifesto Press Cooperative Limited. pp. 1–2.
  13. ^ Meddick, Simon; Payne, Liz; Katz, Phil (2020). Red Lives: Communists and the Struggle for Socialism. UK: Manifesto Press Cooperative Limited. pp. 122–124.
  14. ^ a b c d e f Smith, Evan; Leeworthy, Daryl (15 September 2016). "Before Pride : The Struggle for the Recognition of Gay Rights in the British Communist Movement, 1973–85". Twentieth Century British History: hww043. doi:10.1093/tcbh/hww043. ISSN 0955-2359.
  15. ^ a b Robinson, Lucy (2007). Gay men and the left in post-war Britain: how the personal got political. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-7434-9.
  16. ^ Whitney, Craig R. (15 November 1991). "British Communists Admit Accepting Soviet 'Aid'". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 January 2022.


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