Notes
Decca Aitkenhead, “‘I want to hug him but also shout at him’: Tom Watson on Jeremy Corbyn”, Guardian, 9 August 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/09/tom-watson-interview-jeremy-corbyn-labour-rifts-hug-shout consulted 26 August 2016.
For examples concerning the Communist Party of Great Britain, see Graham Mather, Communist Party of Great Britain: Freedom’s Foremost Enemy, London: Aims of Industry, 1978, as well as Francis Beckett, Enemy Within. The Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party, London: John Murray, 1995, pp. 177-180. For the radical left in general, see Blake Baker, The Far Left. An Exposé of the Extreme Left in Britain, Worthing: Littlehampton Book Services, 1981. Baker was a journalist at the Daily Telegraph.
Willie Thompson, The Good Old Cause. British Communism 1920-1991, London: Pluto Press, 1992, p. 160.
Maoism had appeared in Britain when the Communist Reg Birch founded the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) in 1968, although there was already some interest in the Cultural Revolution in China. However, by the 1970s, Maoism had become extremely marginal, even by the standards of the radical left.
Jim Fyrth, Britain, Fascism and the Popular Front, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1985.
For an analysis of the CPGB’s changing positions, see Kevin Morgan, Against Fascism and War: Ruptures and Continuities in British Communist Politics, 1935-1941, Manchester: MUP, 1989. All membership figures in the following pages are taken from Willie Thompson, The Good Old Cause, p. 218.
Ironically, it was revealed by a former leading figure in the party in 1991 that Stalin himself had written certain passages of the first BRS. George Matthews, “Stalin’s British Road”, Changes, 14 September 1991, pp. 5-7.
In the 1970s, one of the main signs of the closer links between the CPGB and the Labour left was the debate over the Alternative Economic Strategy, a series of radical proposals developed by economists from both parties. The basic proposals can be found in Michael Bleanet, “Alternative Economic Strategy”, Comment, 15 April 1978, pp. 115-116.
Surrey District Committee, “Revisionism of Marxism-Leninism”, Comment, 30 April 1977, p. 146.
For a presentation of these divisions, see Nina Fishman, “The British Road is Resurfaced for New Times: From the British Communist Party to the Democratic Left”, in Martin J. Bull and Paul Heywood (eds), West European Communist Parties after the Revolutions of 1989, London: St Martin Press, 1994, pp. 145-177. The CPGB was succeeded by Democratic Left, which, after two changes of name, merged with Charter 88 to form Unlock Democracy. Several organisations claim the mantle of the CPGB. The most significant of them is the Communist Party of Britain, which continues to have a close relationship with the Morning Star.
John Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987, p. 57.
The Fourth International was created by followers of Leon Trotsky in 1938 after his expulsion from the Soviet Union and signaled the recognition that it was impossible to change from within the Soviet-dominated Third International or Communist International (Comintern).
Evan Smith and Matthew Worley, “Introduction. The far left in Britain from 1956”, in Evan Smith and Matthew Worley (eds), Against the grain: The British far left from 1956, Manchester: MUP, 2014, p. 3.
Tony Cliff, A world to win. Life of a revolutionary, London: Bookmarks, 2000, pp. 39-49.
The SWP became more visible as the CPGB declined in the 1980s, dominating many extra-parliamentary campaigns. It grew in the 1990s and early 2000s, and it helped to found the Stop the War Coalition against the war in Iraq. In more recent years, it has been dogged by infighting. Its participation in George Galloway’s Respect proved to be divisive and contributed to the demotion in 2009 of John Rees, a prominent figure in the party leadership who was also the national secretary of Respect. He resigned from the SWP the following year. In 2013, the SWP’s conference was dominated by accusations of rape made against a former leading member of the Central Committee and by discussion of how the party’s leadership had dealt with them. Critics of the leadership were defeated at a special conference held in March 2014.
Sheila Rowbotham, Promise of a Dream. Remembering the Sixties, London: Verso, 2001, p. 191.
Tariq Ali, Street Fighting Years. An Autobiography of the Sixties, London: Verso, 2005, pp. 330-335, 361-380.
Ibid., p. 314.
Tariq Ali, the most high-profile figure in the IMG, was not, however, allowed to join by Labour’s National Executive Committee. The Socialist League began to fragment following the defeat of the miners’ strike in 1985, and a number of splits and changes of name occurred in the following years.
David Coates and Gordon Johnston, Socialist Strategies, London: Martin Robertson & Company Ltd, 1983, pp. 174-175.
Alan Thornett, Inside Cowley. Trade union struggle in the 1970s: who really opened the door to the Tory onslaught?, London: Porcupine Press, 1998, pp. 84-87.
Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics, p. 81.
Peter Taafe, The Rise of Militant – Militant’s 30 Years, London: Militant Publications, 1995, pp. 74-75.
Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics, p. 205.
One of the key architects of the CPGB’s trade union strategy was the party’s Industrial Organizer Bert Ramelson. Occasionally dubbed ‘the most powerful in Britain’ by the tabloid press, he passed on instructions on resolutions and votes (‘Needs of the Hour’) to Communist delegates before trade union conferences in order to maximize their influence.
Geoff Andrews, Endgames and New Times. The Final Years of British Communism, 1964-1991, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2004, p. 116. Communist were also part of the leadership of the National Union of Students due to the alliances they had established.
For an account of the rise of Scargill written by his closest Communist ally in Yorkshire, see Frank Watters, Being Frank. The Memoirs of Frank Watters, Barnsley: Monkspring Publications, 1992.
It is revealing that an LCDTU conference in 1970 attracted 1,750 delegates, while only 250 people attended an IS industrial conference held the following year. Chris Harman, The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After, London: Bookmarks, 1988, pp. 237-238.
Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics, p. 98-99.
Cliff, A world to win, p. 110.
It was later revealed that Gormley had denounced left-wing members of the NUM’s executive to Special Branch. Richard Norton-Taylor, “Gormley and Buckton named as special branch informers”, Gormley also remained president of the NUM long enough so that, according to the union’s rules, McGahey would be too old to replace him.
Thompson, The Good Old Cause, p. 158.
For his version of events, see Des Warren, The Key to my Cell, London: New Park Publications, 1982.
For a sympathetic in-depth account, see Willie Thompson and Finlay Hart, The UCS Work-in, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1972. For a similarly sympathetic account of all the major strike activity of 1972, see Ralph Darlington and Dave Lyddon, Glorious Summer. Class Struggle in Britain, 1972, London: Bookmarks, 2001.
Cliff, A world to win pp. 160-161.
Nigel Copsey, Anti-Fascism in Britain, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, p. 120.
Dave Renton, When we touched the sky. The Anti-Nazi League 1977-1981, London: Pluto Press, 2006, pp. 136-155.
Ibid, p. 175.
Renton, When we touched the sky, p. 69.
Copsey Anti-Fascism in Britain, pp. 129-229.
Daily Mail Reporters, “Extremists go to War on Police”, Daily Mail, 24 April 1979, pp. 1-3.
This and the following examples are taken from Cliff, A world to win, pp. 161-162.
For a history of RAR written by one of its activists, see David Widgery, Beating Time. Riot’n’Race’n’Rock’n’Roll, London: Chatto, 1986.
Sections of the SWP were of the opinion that punk was a genuine expression of the anger of working class young people, and Socialist Worker took a close interest in it, publishing numerous articles about it from the middle to the end of the 1970s. Jeremy Tranmer, “Rocking Against Racism: Trotskyism, Communism and Punk in Britain”, in Robert Adlington (ed), Red Strains. Music and Communism outside the Communist Bloc, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 272-274.
Michael Hornswell, “Alternative Jubilee casts a warm red glow”, Times, 20 June 1977, p. 1.
Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics, p. 79.
Lucy Robinson, Gay men and the Left in post-war Britain. How the personal got political, Manchester: MUP, 2011 (2007), pp. 93-122.
Thompson, The Good Old Cause, pp 158-159.
Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon (eds), The Heath Government 1970-1974. A Reappraisal, London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 151-152
Renton, When we touched the sky, p. 176. He also admits that other factors came into play such as the drift to the right of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher.
Bert Ramelson, The Social Contract. Cure-all or con-track?, London: CPGB, 1975.
By 1978, it only possessed 26 factory branches. Andrews, Endgames and New Times, p. 190.
See for example, Reuben Falber, “A new political phase”, Comment, 28 May 1977, pp. 171-172.
The difference between the two results can no doubt be explained by the close result of the February election and the desire of some left-wing voters to ensure that Labour had a clear majority in parliament.
He left the party shortly afterwards, but the CPGB candidate in Central Dunbartonshire in 1979 polled only 1,017 votes, underlining the popularity of Reid. The results are taken from “CP general election results”, Comment, 26 May 1979, p. 168.
Ian Birchall, Building the “Smallest Mass Party in the World”, London: SWP, 1981. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/birchall/1981/smallest/part3.html consulted 15 July 2016.
Ibid.
Callaghan, The Far Left in British Politics, p. 158 and p. 185.
For an inside account of the history of Militant, see Peter Taafe, The Rise of Militant - Militant’s 30 years, London: Militant Publications, 1995.
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