Tag: CPGB

Labour History Review

Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 89 (2024), Issue 1

The books listed below are reviewed in Labour History Review (2024), 89, (1), 73-93. Read more. Mike Mecham reviews John Cunningham, Francis Devine, and Sonja Tiernan (eds), Labour History in Irish History: Essays Celebrating Fifty Years of the Irish Labour History Society, Dublin: Umiskin Press, 2023, pp. 451, p/b, £25, ISBN 978 18381 11212 Martin Spence reviews Michael Tichelar, Labour in the Suburbs: Political Change in Croydon during the Twentieth … Continue reading Book reviews in Labour History Review volume 89 (2024), Issue 1

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Commentary, Labour history news

‘The most fruitful period in the history of the British left’?: Communists and the Popular Front in the 1930s

In ‘“The most fruitful period in the history of the British left”[1]?: Communists and the Popular Front in the 1930s’, John McIlroy and Alan Campbell introduce a brace of recent articles examining the Comintern, the British Communist Party (CPGB) and the Popular Front in Britain, France and Spain between 1935 and 1939. The Popular Front policy which was put together through 1934 and formally adopted … Continue reading ‘The most fruitful period in the history of the British left’?: Communists and the Popular Front in the 1930s

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Bursary reports, Research bursaries

James Squires (Sheffield Hallam) on the CPGB, anti-militarism and pacifism after the First World War

My PhD researches the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and its relationship with anti-militarist and pacifist ideas from the First World War. The thesis reassesses the political development of the CPGB by focusing on the conscientious objector cohort that joined the Party following its formation in 1920. I explore the impact of the 1917 Russian Revolutions on the largest anti-war group, the No-Conscription Fellowship … Continue reading James Squires (Sheffield Hallam) on the CPGB, anti-militarism and pacifism after the First World War

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Bursary reports, Research bursaries

Gregory Billam (Edge Hill University) on the CPGB, the Historians’ Group and the CPA between 1946-1956

My thesis focuses on the Communist Party of Great Britain’s British Road to Socialism (1951) within a wider international context of ‘national roads to socialism’, in which communist parties were told to adapt to ‘national’ circumstances. My research examines the British party’s ‘road to socialism’ at the British Empire’s centre, and that of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) at its periphery in the early … Continue reading Gregory Billam (Edge Hill University) on the CPGB, the Historians’ Group and the CPA between 1946-1956

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Obituaries

Willie Thompson (1939-2023)

The death of Willie Thompson will be mourned across the labour history community. He was a visible presence for some sixty years. Although born in Glasgow, he was at heart a Shetlander. A man of the Iles who nevertheless admitted to having a love-hate relationship with them. But he never left them behind, always keeping in touch wherever he was through reading the island’s press. … Continue reading Willie Thompson (1939-2023)

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Labour History Review

‘Uncomradely and Un-communist’: Breakdown in the Communist Anglosphere? The Communist Party of Great Britain and Communist Party of Australia Debate, 1947–1948

Author: Gregory BillamThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2023), 88, (1), 43-74. Read more. 2022 LABOUR HISTORY REVIEW ESSAY PRIZE WINNER The communist parties of Britain’s empire were notably excluded from the newly established Cominform in September 1947. In their absence, previous hierarchical relationships became less clear, as the fiery exchange between the CPA (Australia) and CPGB (Great Britain) … Continue reading ‘Uncomradely and Un-communist’: Breakdown in the Communist Anglosphere? The Communist Party of Great Britain and Communist Party of Australia Debate, 1947–1948

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Advice & reference

Additions to labour history archive collections 2022

This has been a bumper year for new additions to labour history archives around the country. Almost certainly the largest collection to find a place in the archives during 2022 were administrative, financial, legal and other records of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and its predecessors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that now occupy some 300 linear metres of shelf space, promising to … Continue reading Additions to labour history archive collections 2022

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Documents & objects

‘There will be no bevvying’: the 1971 UCS work-in

Introducing a pamphlet published by the Communist Party of Great Britain during the 1971 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in. The pamphlet can be downloaded from this page. ‘We are not going to strike. We are not even having a sit-in strike. Nobody and nothing will come in, and nothing will go out, without our permission. And there will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, … Continue reading ‘There will be no bevvying’: the 1971 UCS work-in

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Books etc, Labour history news

Communist Party bookshops: a history

Alternative and Left book shops were once a common sight in larger cities – and could even be found in smaller towns when there was a sufficiently vibrant radical culture to support them. Some failed after no more than a few months, while others traded more or less successfully for decades. And while many later arrivals from the 1960s onwards were eclectic in their radical … Continue reading Communist Party bookshops: a history

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Commentary, Labour history news

Stalinism and ultra-leftism: a warning from history – the leadership of the CPGB, 1928-1934

Alan Campbell and John McIlroy share headline findings from their research into the leadership of the Communist Party of Great Britain during the Comintern’s Third Period, 1928–1934. In a recent article for Labor History, we continue 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 … Continue reading Stalinism and ultra-leftism: a warning from history – the leadership of the CPGB, 1928-1934

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