Communist Party of Great Britain in the context of Jessie Eden


Communist Party of Great Britain in the context of Jessie Eden

⭐ Core Definition: Communist Party of Great Britain

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. 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, which party activist Bill Alexander commanded.

In World War II, the CPGB followed the Comintern position, opposing or supporting the war in line with the involvement of the USSR. 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 Jessie Eden, David Ivon Jones, Abraham Lazarus, Ken Gill, Clem Beckett, GCT Giles, Mike Hicks, and Thora Silverthorne.

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Communist Party of Great Britain in the context of Bolshevization

Bolshevization of the Communist International has at least two meanings. First it meant to independently change the way of working of new communist parties, such as the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in the early 1920s. Secondly was the process from 1924 by which the pluralistic Communist International (Comintern) and its constituent Communist parties were increasingly subject to pressure by the Soviet government in Moscow. With the development within Soviet Communism of Marxism–Leninism under Joseph Stalin, this latter Bolshevization became more clearly Stalinization. The autonomy of national Communist parties was downplayed and the Comintern became a tool of Soviet foreign policy.

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Communist Party of Great Britain in the context of Morning Star (UK newspaper)

The Morning Star is a left-wing British daily newspaper with a focus on social, political and trade union issues. Originally founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), ownership was transferred from the CPGB to an independent readers' co-operative, the People's Press Printing Society, in 1945 and later renamed the Morning Star in 1966. The paper describes its editorial stance as in line with Britain's Road to Socialism, the programme of the Communist Party of Britain.

The Daily Worker initially opposed the Second World War and its London edition was banned in Britain between 1941 and 1942. After the Soviet Union joined the Allies, the paper enthusiastically backed the war effort. During the Cold War, the paper provided a platform for critics of the US and its allies. This included whistleblowers who provided evidence that the British military were allowing their forces to collect severed heads during the Malayan Emergency, and exposing the mass graves of civilians killed by the South Korean government.

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Communist Party of Great Britain in the context of The Road to Wigan Pier

The Road to Wigan Pier is the fifth book by the English writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. Its first half documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions among the working class in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World War II. Its second half is a long essay on his middle-class upbringing, and the development of his political conscience, questioning British attitudes towards socialism. Orwell states plainly that he himself is in favour of socialism, but feels it necessary to point out reasons why many people who would benefit from socialism, and should logically support it, are in practice likely to be strong opponents.

According to Orwell biographer Bernard Crick, publisher Victor Gollancz first tried to persuade Orwell's agent to allow the Left Book Club edition to consist solely of the descriptive first half of the book. When this was refused Gollancz wrote an introduction to the book. "Victor could not bear to reject it, even though his suggestion that the 'repugnant' second half should be omitted from the Club edition was turned down. On this occasion Victor, albeit nervously, did overrule Communist Party objections in favour of his publishing instinct. His compromise was to publish the book with [an introduction] full of good criticism, unfair criticism, and half-truths."

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Communist Party of Great Britain in the context of Tomb of Karl Marx

The Tomb of Karl Marx is in the Eastern cemetery of Highgate Cemetery, North London, England. It is the burial site of Karl Marx, his wife Jenny von Westphalen, and other members of Marx's family. Originally buried in a different part of the Eastern cemetery, the bodies were disinterred and reburied at their present location in 1954. The tomb was designed by Laurence Bradshaw and it was unveiled in 1956, in a ceremony led by Harry Pollitt, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, which funded the memorial.

The tomb consists of a large bust of Marx in bronze set on a marble pedestal. The pedestal is inscribed with quotes from Marx's works including, on the front, the final words of The Communist Manifesto, "Workers of all lands unite". Since its construction, the tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for followers of Marxist theory. It has also been a target for Marx's opponents, suffering vandalism, and two bomb attacks in the 1970s. It is a Grade I listed structure, the highest listing reserved for buildings and structures of "exceptional interest".

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Communist Party of Great Britain in the context of Tankie

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical. It has a history of being used by some anti-authoritarian leftists, anarchists, democratic socialists, and reformists to denounce Stalinism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberal and right‐wing factions as well.

The term "tankie" was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defence of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions. The term has extended to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the actions of communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong. In recent times, the term has been used across the political spectrum and in a geopolitical context to accuse individuals of having a bias in favour of anti-Western states, authoritarian states, or states with a socialist legacy; Belarus, Cuba, China, Iran, Nicaragua, Ba'athist Syria, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela serve as prevalent examples.

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