New article on the ‘Third Period’ - correspondence from John McIlroy and Alan Campbell
John
McIlroy and Alan Campbell, ‘“Class Against Class: The leadership of the
Communist Party of Great Britain during the Comintern’s Third Period,
1928–1934’, Labor History, vol. 63, no. 2 (2022), pp. 145–189.
This article
continues our extended prosopographical study of leading British Communists
between the wars. It reports on a survey of the 66 members who served on the
Central Committee (CC) of the British party (CPGB) between 1928 and 1934. We
were able to assemble basic details of 63 of the 66 CC representatives during
these years which are usually termed the Third Period of the Comintern. We drew
a blank on ‘Miss Phillipson’ and ‘J. Parcell’ and were only able to establish a
fragmentary profile of Alexander McLean employed at the Cowlairs Railway
Workshops in Glasgow. This constitutes an authoritative sample unusual in a
literature where studies which combine statistical rigour with collective
biography are rare.
The Third Period and the politics of
‘Class Against Class’ in Britain related in intimate but distinctive fashion to
the consolidation of Stalinism, brutal industrialisation and coercive
collectivisation of agriculture in the Soviet Union – Stalin’s ‘second
revolution’. Class Against Class announced a resurgence of capitalist crisis,
the ‘revolutionisation’ of the proletariat and a turn to fascism by the
leadership of the labour movement. As the ‘social fascists’ sought to integrate
labour with the bourgeois state and manage their members in the interests of
capital, the Comintern terminated ‘united front’ initiatives with reformist
leaders, only a ‘united front from below’ of Communists and workers rebelling
against reformism was permissible. The mantle of ‘independent leadership’ fell
on the CPGB which in favourable conditions should attempt to build
revolutionary trade unions. Historians for the most part have concurred with
the party’s official history in deeming the episode ‘a disaster’ (Branson, History
of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1927–1941, p. 17). The
independent-minded scholar, Leslie Macfarlane, considered that ‘by the end of
the twenties [CPGB] policies had lost almost all contact with reality’ (The British
Communist Party: Its Origin and Development until 1929, p. 279). Roderick
Martin believed the CPGB line was ‘alien to the whole tradition of British
trade unionism, had no chance of success and could only lead to Communist
isolation’ (Communism and the British Trade Unions, p. 121). James
Hinton and Richard Hyman observed ‘the insane sectarianism of Stalin’s “third
period” … by 1930 the CPGB was little more than an isolated sect’ (Trade
Unions and Revolution, pp. 48, 73). Pronouncing ‘The view that social
democracy was therefore a greater danger than the rise of Hitler, indeed that
it could be described as “social fascism” bordered on political insanity’, Eric
Hobsbawm reflected: ‘Excuses for the lunacies of the Comintern may no doubt be
found’ (Interesting Times, pp. 68–69). Within this all-encompassing
political failure, some have drawn attention to Communist work among the unemployed,
workers’ theatre, sporting activity and ‘Little Moscows’ (see, for example,
Matthew Worley, Class Against Class: The Communist Party in Britain Between
the Wars, 2002) – which, of course, Communists saw as an ancillary means of
progressing towards revolution, not as a substitute for it.
Much has been written about the
Third Period in Britain; but little is known about many of those who steered
the CPGB through these stormy years. Recuperation repairs an absence in the
historiography. The 63 Communists we studied were examined in relation to their
origins, occupations, prior affiliations, political careers and destinations.
The CC was made up overwhelmingly of workers: 89.1% were from working-class
homes compared with 10.9% from middle-class backgrounds – a slight increase on
earlier years. The male segment of the proletariat predominated, with skilled
manual workers – conventionally seen as the backbone of Communist parties – but
also miners strongly represented. The number of women on the committees more
than doubled; but females remained a small minority – only ten of the 66
representatives, 15.2% were women, while there was only one person of colour,
Palme Dutt, who came from an atypical bourgeois background. Consonant with the
Comintern’s determination to purge those leaders who had been associated with
‘the old line’, 62% of these representatives were newcomers, turnover accelerated
– significantly compared with 1923–1927 – and the Old Guard was removed.
Prominent among those who suffered destructive criticism and whose careers and
lives changed, were Albert Inkpin, Arthur Horner, Tommy Jackson, Andrew
Rothstein, Jock Wilson and, a little later, Jack Murphy.
Overall, the mean age of
representatives declined from 37 to 34 years – hardly a triumph of the
Comintern aspiration to youthful renewal. Moscow’s demand that the CC be
restructured to include more factory militants new to the struggle met with
mixed success. Many brought into the leadership on that basis at a time of high
unemployment and victimisation graduated to the party payroll, rather than
continuing to agitate in the workplace. By 1934, 90% of CC representatives were
employed by the CPGB; although the spectrum ran from the semi-permanent to
those on insecure ‘short-term contracts’. Nonetheless, professionalisation of
the party, while still limited, was marked in comparison with the Communist
Party’s predecessors, the British Socialist Party and the Socialist Labour
Party, although they were not subsidised by a state.
But short-term upheaval in these
years failed to achieve a lasting renewal of the party leadership.
Around 75% of those who made their debut on the CC during the years of ‘Class
Against Class’ did not survive beyond them as committee representatives; or
took other leading roles. This had negative implications for Lenin’s
injunctions to construct a stable cadre. On the other hand, a group of 12 who
served on the CC before, during and after the Third Period was bolstered by a cohort
of 10 Newcomers who continued in the party leadership after 1934. However,
renewal was limited. In succeeding decades, none of the latter group challenged
the influence and prestige of the inner core of ageing veterans, notably Harry
Pollitt, J.R. Campbell, Rajani Palme Dutt, Willie Gallacher – all founder
members – and Peter Kerrigan who joined a little later – a group which, for
better or for worse, directed the CPGB from the 1920s until the end of the
1950s.
To read the full article:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KZR5A6S2ZJKNNVC38TU8/full?target=10.1080/0023656X.2022.2074973
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