Communist Party of Great Britain

This article is about the party active from 1920 to 1991. For other uses, 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
Other AffiliatesWest African National Secretariat
National Minority Movement (1924-1929)
Popular Front (UK) (1936-1940)

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.

From 1956 until the late 1970s, the party was funded by the Soviet Union.[10][14] 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. ^ Whitney, Craig R. (15 November 1991). "British Communists Admit Accepting Soviet 'Aid'". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 January 2022.


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