The following article celebrating forty years of the Communist Party of Great Britain was written by Bob Stewart and appeared in the September 1960 issue of the journal Labour Monthly. At the time Bob was 83 years old and had ‘retired’ from active work three years earlier. The piece is written from the perspective of being one of the last men standing’ from the formation of the CPGB in 1920.
“HISTORY will record that the birth of a Communist Party in Britain was the outstanding event of the 1920’s. The fact that it was nearly three years after the Bolshevik victory of 1917 indicates the difficulties encountered and overcome before it saw the light of day. Small as the event appeared, it was nevertheless the political culmination of more than a hundred years of British working class struggle against the rule of the capitalist class. These years had inscribed indelible victories as well as many defeats on the banners of the oldest working class movement of Europe.
Along the years it built the modern Trade Union movement which despite weakness, sectionalism and betrayal is still a powerful weapon and a training ground for militant workers. It embraced Chartism which meant the intrusion into politics of revolutionary ideas and practices on a mass scale. It eventually cast off the manacles of the Liberal Party even if it is not vet free from their illusions. It gave birth to the Labour Party out of the strange assortment of Fabians, Independent Labour Party, Social Democratic Federation which became the British Socialist Party, the latter becoming a leading component of the Communist Party, and was itself affiliated to the Labour Party. Due to historic circumstances which I have not space to detail, the Labour Party has rejected a scientific outlook. It rejected Marxism, abhorred revolution, and has spent half a century confusing and befuddling the working class with hopes that capitalism would change its spots or at least let the right wing leaders of Labour paint them a different hue.
Necessarily capitalism imputed foreign parentage to the C.P. as it had done to Chartism and to early Socialist or other progressive movements. The mud refused to stick. The C.P. was bone and flesh of the British working class. Of course it had and is proud of its international connections. That also is a fine tradition of our class. The more immediate circumstances attending the birth of the C.P. may be thus described. Prior to 1914-18 and during the First World War there were outside of the official Labour Party many of the most class-conscious and militant workers who were split up amongst a number of more or less Marxist sects, e.g., the Socialist Labour Party, Workers’ Socialist Federation, South Wales Socialist Society, and many lesser bodies in various localities. These were largely concerned about the purity of their gospel. There were also the shop stewards, the workers’ committees and many unattached rebels, New Age readers, Guildsmen, etc. Amongst them were great agitators and strike leaders who had with Tom Mann and others headed the struggles of workers on Merseyside, Clyde and elsewhere before World War I.
August, 1914, saw official Labour, like official Social Democracy, dip their flags of red and appear in the flamboyant colours of the capitalists they were supposed to fight against. A sorry spectacle indeed, relieved if but a little by the few who kept the flag aloft. The course of the war brought hellish experiences to the workers. Along came Military Service Acts, which gave rise to an Anti-Conscription movement, Munitions Acts, Rent Acts, high prices. Out of these struggles the clamant need for unity, discipline and wider understanding was arising here, as in every country.
Then came 1917, and the glorious victory of the Russian workers and peasants. The movement in Britain was reborn out of the fires of war. On July 31 and August 1, 1920, after months of negotiation, a convention was brought together in London by the Joint Provisional Committee of the Communist Unity Conference, representing chiefly British Socialist Party, Communist Unity Group, South Wales Communist Council. (The unification was completed in the early months of 1921. The Leeds Congress in January, 1921, brought in the Scottish Communist Labour Party, whose leading members included William Gallacher and J. R. Campbell; while the left wing of the Independent Labour Party, including Shapurji Saklatvala, came in a month or two afterwards.)
At this founding convention in August, 1920, well-known figures included Bob Williams of the Transport Workers Federation, A. A. Purcell, Colonel Malone, William Mellor, Joe Vaughan, Arthur McManus, Tom Bell, William Paul and Albert Inkpin. Of the Provisional Executive elected I fear I am now alone. Some have done their day and passed on. Others sought other fields and have faded from my memory. The convention was serious and full of zeal, sharply divided on the question of affiliation to the Labour Party, but when Paul and Hodgson had finished debate and affiliation was carried the Conference agreed in unanimity. I recollect that after the convention finished on the Sunday, a group comprising Bill Hewlett of Wales, Bill Jackson of Sheffield, Frank Simpson of Perth, George Anderson of Coatbridge, Fred Douglas and myself from Dundee were steered by Jock Laurie of Aberdeen to what he called the ‘Merble Airch’. Before long we were spectators at a B.S.P. meeting. Jock said, ‘the speaker’s gey cauld’. Off he went and how he managed it I had not time to find out before I was hustled through the crowd and found myself making what I suppose must have been the first report back of the first Party Conference, which was received with great enthusiasm. Then to the train, where fate had delivered a very orthodox clergyman into our carriage, and did we baptise him!
That was our send-off. What have we to show for our Party over the years? Not enough but still a lot. We played our part in pulling capitalism’s hands off Russia. We backed and fought for British Miners when officialdom turned their backs and even their guns on them. We expelled even big Bob Williams for his part in the Triple Alliance betrayal of the miners. The defeat of the miners opened the way for attacks on engineers, textile-workers, seamen, etc. In all of these struggles our members were active. In the heat of these struggles some succumbed and left us for easier paths. We fought the opportunist heritage brought in by local Councillors or personal egoists. The Government of the day soon recognised the new type of Party. Raids were frequent, our General Secretary, Albert Inkpen, was arrested and sentenced, active workers, especially in the minefields, were doing time. Our organisation was still lamentably weak and sectarian. Printers were blackmailed into refusing to print our articles and pamphlets. We started our own printing works. Our editors faced libel and sedition charges, so that we needed a double shift, sometimes a treble one.
By 1924 we had our first taste of Labour Government, rather sourish at that. Johnny Campbell put the cat among the pigeons and very much upset MacDonald & Co. By 1924 we began to put new life into the trade unions through the Minority Movement whose secretary was Harry Pollitt, later Arthur Horner. So 1925 opened new economic battles. Government was compelled to subsidise mineowners and assume emergency powers. To prepare for the next round they arrested twelve of our leading members. They were found guilty of conspiracy to utter seditious libels. Six, with previous convictions, were given twelve months.
Six were offered release if they would forswear their allegiance. But one and all refused and served six months’ sentences. Further attacks on the miners were more than decent workers were prepared to put up with, so came the General Strike and wholesale arrests, office raids. This greatest confrontation of the classes in Britain in our time sent their leaders shivering to sell the pass and leave the miners to their fate. Fierce punishment befell the workers in consequence of this betrayal. Victimisation was common and hard, hard times kept knocking at the door. The miners survived their desperate ordeal. . . .
1929. Once again a Labour government which succumbed to American capitalist pressure. The defection of McDonald, Thomas and Snowden and their descent into a ‘National Government’ did not stop the economic rot. Unemployed relief was cut to the bone. These tested our membership and they withstood the pressure and nobly headed or fought in the ranks of the unemployed, joined in hunger marches, fought the police and won concessions. Meantime the German monopolists had been set on their feet again by American and British investments. But being unable to rule in the old way, they washed out the remnants of democratic practice and forged a rod of iron for Hitler to wield while they cheered him on to the fight against the growing Soviet power. Fascism reared its black flags in Britain too, but the working class showed its strength and routed it. In 1935 we scored a real Parliamentary success by the return of William Gallacher who by his Communist attitude did much to add to his own and the Party’s prestige. We led the fight and formed the British section of the International Brigade which saved the honour of the British working class in the battlefields of Spain. 1939: that fatal year that saw the outbreak of that most vicious war of the centuries. Here also our Party gave freely of its dearest and best to bring the war to a victorious end. When it ended the British workers’ stored-up anger burst through to the defeat of Churchill and placed their hopes on the Labour Government, which shooed them off with meagre reforms and played a sorry second fiddle to American big business so that once again our Party is leading the fight against further war.
Now we have established the Party as a potent factor in British politics. Our numbers have grown. We have lost many brave and able leaders but we have raised able successors. Our camp of Peace grows daily and despite provocation we know that the forces of Peace will prevail. All our efforts are turned in that direction. Our literature is improving daily. Our Daily Worker is known the world over. We are no longer the feeble body of propagandists that we were in 1920 but a strong virile Party worthy of the class we find it an honour to serve.”
Bob Stewart, ‘LABOUR MONTHLY’, September 1960.
Breaking the Fetters 