The British Communist Party and the War, 1939-41: Old Slogans Revived Author(s): David Childs Reviewed

work(s): Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 237-253 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/260215 . Accessed: 18/02/2012 15:02
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Journal of Contemporary History, 12 (1977), 237-253

The British Communist Party and the War,1939-41: Old Slogans Revived
David Childs

When the tired voice of Neville Chamberlain announced on the radio on 3 September 1939 that 'this country is at war with Germany', most of his listeners felt a mixture of fear and relief. The fear was due to the widespread belief, born mainly of extensive cinema newsreel coverage of the Spanish Civil War, that massive aerial bombardment was imminent. The relief was the result of the feeling that, at last, the uncertainty was over. The inevitable journey had begun, even if the final destination remained unknown. Most people agreed with the Prime Minister that the German moves in Poland constituted 'a wicked and unprovoked attack' and that they would be fighting 'evil things' 'brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution.' What did the 18,000 or so members of the Communist Party think? Talks with individuals who were Party members at that time, and a look at the public statements of their leaders, indicate that, the HitlerStalin Pact notwithstanding, most of them felt the same fear and relief as their compatriots. They could claim that their Party had been fighting 'evil things' for at least three years, during the Spanish Civil War, and even before that. Now at last, virtually the whole nation, including its reluctant bourgeois leaders, would be united in fighting fascism. At the end of July, Willie Gallacher, the Party's sole parliamentary representative, asked,
Why is it that it is always those who are being attacked who have to show admirable restraint and that we allow the aggressors to go on from one stage to another? I suggest that it is about time that we encouraged Poland to adopt a different attitude towards the aggression ...1 237

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He meant of course, a more aggressive attitude. And even with the Hitler-Stalin Pact behind him, he could still tell the House of Commons on 2 September, Just as I was readyto make any sacrificeto save the peace of Europeand to save the people of this country from the horrorsof war, so I will stick at no sacrificeto ensurethe defeat of Nazi aggression, to restorelastingpeace to and the world ... Harry Pollitt, the Party's Secretary, issued a pamphlet in which he stressed the CP's support for the war effort. But even in the heady days of early September the Party was not prepared to give unrestricted support to the Government. As Gallacher continued, in his speech of 2 September, he opposed the National Service Bill, which introduced conscription, because he did not trust the men of Munich in the government. These 'men who betrayed democracy a year ago will have to go.' Of course, the Communists were not alone in this suspicion. Many supporters of the Labour and Liberal parties, and even some Conservatives, had their doubts about Chamberlain. Both the Labour Party and the Liberals refused to join him in a coalition. It was, however, one thing to be critical, but quite another to deny the Government the necessary means to defend the country against an obvious enemy. The Soviet invasion of eastern Poland on 17 September posed a new problem for the Party and unleashed a great deal of critical discussion on the left. Mr Gallacher put the official Moscow view to the Commons:
What is expected of the great Socialist State? Are they just to stand behind their borders and see all these millions of Russians and these masses of Jewish people coming under the domination of the Nazis, and to see the Nazis coming

frontier?2 rightup to the Russian This line of reasoning was echoed in the Party press, and by Communists up and down the country. A vigorous correspondence was opened in the New Statesman and Nation, no doubt a key forum for the Party and non-Party left intelligentsia alike. Pat Sloan, already wellknown as a fervent advocate of the Soviet point of view, felt, 'The uproar about Soviet action to save at least the Western Ukraine and White Russia, with their Jewish populations, from the Nazis, appears a little
misplaced.' The scientist Professor J.B.S. Haldane, claimed, 'I cannot understand how an intelligent person can find its policy in any way inconsistent.' And 'I would sooner be a Jew in Berlin than a Kaffir in

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Johannesburg or a negro in French Equatorial Africa.' True some Communists were disillusioned by Soviet actions in Poland, but the Party could quote other voices outside its ranks. A.L. Rowse, Labour candidate for Penryn and Falmouth, believed 'This country may have reason to be grateful that the Russians are covering the Rumanian frontier. More power to their elbow!'3 He probably represented the thinking of at least a section of the Labour movement. The New Statesman and Nation itself saw the Soviet moves as 'Brest-Litovsk Revenged' urging, on 23 September, 'caution and quiet speaking' vis-a-vis the JUSSR. On the right too the Soviet invasion found some understanding. Robert Boothby told the Commons,
I am thankful that Russian troops are now along the Polish-Rumanian frontier. I would rather have Russian troops there than German troops ... we want all the support we can get; and I hope that one day we shall get the support of Soviet Russia. Finally, no less a person that Winston Churchill said in a broadcast, We could have wished that the Russian armies should be standing on their present line as the friends and allies of Poland, instead of as invaders. But that the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace. At any rate the line is there, and an Eastern Front has been created which Nazi Germany does not dare assail. When Herr von Ribbentrop was summoned to Moscow last week it was to learn the fact, and to accept the fact, that the Nazi designs upon the Baltic States and upon the Ukraine must come to a dead stop.5 Churchill's statement was widely quoted by the Communists as vindication of their own position. Naturally, neither Churchill nor the British Communists knew anything about the secret accords between the two dictators. At this stage then, the Communist Party was by no means isolated in its criticism of Chamberlain nor in its support for the Soviets, and it was still behind the war effort. Its situation changed fundamentally during the next month. As Douglas Hyde, a prominent Party member at the time, has recalled, the Central Committee had spent hours drawing up a stirring manifesto calling on the British people to sacrifice

all in the great anti-fascist struggle:

Then, unexpectedly, in walked the British representative to the Communist International whom everyone had thought was still in Moscow. He took one look at the manifesto, and told the leaders they would have to scrap it. It was, he said, an imperialist war. The Comintern had said so, and that meant opposing it in the classical Marxist way.6

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Harry Pollitt, and certain others in the leadership refused to accept the new line, though they later did so. On 7 October the Party issued a manifesto giving full weight to the Comintern policy. It argued that This war is a fight between imperialistpowers over profits, colonies and
world domination . . . The leaders of the Labour Party and Trades Union

movement have sided fully with the Government of Chamberlainand movementto support Churchilland are attemptingto get the working-class their imperialistwar aims. This policy, if not challenged. . . will hand over enormousnumbersof young people to become cannon fodder in an unjust
war.

What was needed was the formation of a new government which would initiate peace negotiations and represent the interests of the people against the 'armament kings and plundering millionaires.' It went on to claim that 'Nazi aggression has been checked and limited by the power of the Soviet Union and today the Nazi leader is suing for peace.'7 The Manifesto was referring to the fact that, after his military victory in Poland, Hitler had proposed peace negotiations. He was hardly 'suing for peace'! Overwhelmingly, Conservative, Liberal and Labour opinion had no faith in Hitler's appeals. But Mr Gallacher called for negotiations in a speech in the House of Commons on 3 October. He and his fellow comrades then kept up this demand until June 1941. At the time, apart from George Bernard Shaw, Lloyd George, and a handful of pacifists, there were few outside the ranks of the CP who supported this demand. On 13 October the pro-negotiation view was tested at the Clackmannan and East Stirling by-election. Andrew Stewart, a graduate of Glasgow University and assistant editor of the pacifist Peace News, supported by the Independent Labour Party, Peace Pledge Union and No-Conscription League, opposed the Labour nominee, the only other candidate. Stewart polled only 1,060 votes, his opponent 15,645. This was despite the many grievances of the Stirling electors: there were 'snags' in the scheme for billeting evacuee children in local homes; there was a coal registration muddle which was hitting local householders; there was dissatisfaction among local sheep-breeders about marketing controls; rate increases were on the agenda; and alcoholic beverages were to cost more. These problems were in addition to all those which faced the constituency from the days of peace unemployment, poverty and bad housing. The local paper had felt that

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there was dissatisfaction in the air. As an example it produced the following political joke which, it claimed, was going the rounds of local offices and barbers' shops:
Mussolini, Hi tier, Chamberlain, Daladier, Which wins?

By reading vertically the third letter of every word it will be found that the question answers itself. Or does it? Time will tell.'8

Those who opposed the war forced other by-elections. In December both the ILP and the Communists fielded candidates against the Conservative at Stretford. On a 36 per cent poll the Conservative retained the seat, gaining 23,408 votes against 4,424 for the ILP and 1,519 for the Communist, who even had the advantage of being known locally, having been the Labour candidate in the constituency before embracing communism in July 1939. The Communist result was not, therefore, very impressive. Only 24 per cent of the electorate voted in the Central Southwark by-election. The official (pro-war) Labour man received 5,285 votes. The local Labour councillor who opposed him as an anti-war candidate got only 1,550. Another independent gained 1,382 votes. In the Silverhouse division of West Ham, Harry Pollitt flopped with only 966 votes against the Labour candidate's 14,343. His only consolation was the vote of 151 for the Fascist candidate. Finally, at Kettering, on 6 March 1940, the Conservative candidate romped home with 17,914 votes against the 6,616 for the Anti-War and Pensioners' candidate, who was a local Labour councillor. Dismal though these results were, the Communists still managed to glean hope from them. A Party publication claimed, partly on the basis of these results, 'The record of the first six months shows the growth of a widespread movement against the war, which is without parallel in previous wars.'9 The other reasons for the Communists' optimism will be examined later. It was the kind of grievances which afflicted the Stirling voters which engaged much of the Communists' attention in the next year. However, before they could settle down to such bread and butter issues, they had to face another very embarrassing issue - the Soviet

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attack on Finland. Moscow's invasion of Finland was presented to the Party members as yet another Soviet blow for peace.l0 Stalin, it was claimed, was cunningly reshaping his frontiers and thus strengthening his defensive positions. The recalcitrant and reactionary Finns were being egged on by an assorted anti-Soviet coalition uniting the Spanish and Italian fascists with the British and US capitalists and the right-wing Labour leaders. This was true in so far as all these groups were attempting to send help, of one kind or another, to Finland. Luckily, the nightmare possibility of British troops coming into conflict with the Soviets ended with the defeat of Finland in 1940. But the Communists, and some others, continued to ask, how Britain, which was so short of equipment that it had to engage in a 'phoney' war with Germany, could afford to send material and men to Finland, Surely it proved once again that Chamberlain was more interested in war against Russia than against Germany? When, later in 1940, the Baltic states disappeared to re-emerge as republics of the USSR, the situation was less embarrassing for the Party. Few people in Britain knew anything about them, and their occupation was swift and virtually unopposed. If the aim of Chamberlain's foreign policy, according to the Communists, was to turn the war against the Soviets, his internal policy was designed to replace bourgeois democracy with Britishstyle fascism. As Harry Pollitt argued:
The Tory Die-hards represent a class that will never fight for democracy or freedom for -he common people. Rather it will use the mass feelings against Hitler's fascism to impose certain aspects of that same fascism on the workers of Britain and not hesitate to enlist the help of the Labour leaders for that purpose.

D.N. Pritt gave greater depth to this analysis in his book Choose
Your Future (London 1941). He denounced the internment of 'friendly

aliens and refugees' claiming, 'it was difficult to find any argument to
that this treatment of the most those who contended confute determined opponents of Hitler and Mussolini was evidence of Fifth Column activities inside the British ruling-class.' He went on to claim, One of the most striking developments of the legislation is the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1940, passed in the summer of 1940, which amends and widens the powers given by the Act of 1939, and makes it possible at any moment for the Government to govern Britain as a totalitarian state.

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This statement was not in itself untrue, but it failed to take into consideration the situation facing the country when Parliament agreed to the legislation - the nightmare threat of imminent invasion with very few forces to counter the threat. The Communists, and Mr Pritt, had used the Soviet Union's fear of invasion to justify its permanent emergency powers, but they were less understanding in the British
case.

Later in the same book, Pritt, still an MP but having been expelled from the Labour Party for his pro-communist activities, revealed where he thought the choice for Britain lay: 'between a socialist Britain and a degeneration into a fascist Britain; and it is plain that the ruling class, faced with this choice, prefers fascism to socialism.' This was at the time when Churchill and Attlee were leading a genuinely national government. Throughout 1940, even after the 'phoney war' had turned very hot and Britain faced defeat first in Norway, and then in Holland, Belgium and France, the Communists intensified their anti-war propaganda. They tended to blame the British leaders, at least as much, if not more, than the Nazis for every extension of the war. As R. Palme Dutt put it in the Labour Monthly in July 1940:
Britain violates Norwegian neutrality and prepares an expeditionary force to 'forestall' Germany. Germany gets in first and invades Norway to 'forestall' Britain. Britain seizes Iceland to 'forestall' Germany. Germany invades Holland and Belgium to 'forestall' Britain. The drawing of Holland and Belgium into the war is at once calculated by Britain and France, not in terms of small countries of seventeen million inhabitants, but of vast colonial empires with an area seventy times as great and with seventy-three million inhabitants. The value of Belgium and Holland is calculated in terms of gold, dollar reserves, rubber, tin, copper. Britain immediately seizes the Dutch West Indies. Britain, Japan and the US watch each other like jackals over the Dutch East Indies. The alleged expansionist aims of British imperialism were a constant theme of communist propaganda. In the same issue of the Labour

Monthly, Dutt had characterized the proposal for a federal union of

Britian and France, conceived by Churchill to bolster French morale, as 'the figleaf of the annexationist plans of British Imperialism.'

Earlier in the year, his comrade, Ivor Montagu, had denounced proposals for a federal union of western European democracies: 'Here we have the epitome of Anglo-French hegemony, the Anglo-French translation of Lebensraum.'12 Once again there is the implication
that the British and French were basically no different from the Nazis.

Even the resignation of Chamberlain, and his replacement by Churchill

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heading a genuinely national government in May 1940, brought no positive response from the Communists. On the contrary, Dutt pronounced, in his Labour Monthly (June 1940, 328), 'The new Coalition Government of Churchill-Chamberlain-Attlee is a Government of full and unlimited imperialist war.' The Labour leaders had committed the 'final betrayal' by joining it. As always the Communists knew that if they were to make any headway they must take up the genuine grievances of sections of the country, especially the workers. This they attempted to do. In the House of Commons Gallacher concentrated on sniping at the Government over many mundane, but no less important for that, problems of ordinary people. Typically, on 14 August 1940 he was urging adequate cheap fare facilities for all parents of evacuated children. The same day he sought the reimbursement of fees for Mercantile Marine wireless operators, who had paid for their own training, and who were being conscripted into the RAF where training was free. The following day he took up the case of 300 Irish building workers in Liverpool who wanted permission to visit their families in Eire at weekends. More rhetorically, he had asked the Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin, on 8 August, to 'take note of the great discrepancy between the pay of the men of the Armed Forces and the salaries of bank directors.' And on 5 October he attacked the alleged use of the Home Guard in industrial disputes in Scotland. Not that he was against the Home Guard! On 30 July he had been calling for financial help for its members. More than anything else, the issue of the alleged inadequacies of the air raid shelter system occupied Gallacher's attention. Throughout the country the Communists campaigned on this and related issues. And undoubtedly they attracted some limited support outside their own ranks, which they sought to mobilize and extend through a series of congresses. The first of these was a delegate conference under the title 'Labour and the War' called by the Labour Monthly. It was held in the Holborn Hall on 25 February 1940 and was attended by 878 delegates who claimed to speak for 379 working-class organizations representing a membership of 340,000. In fact, the official figures admitted that 304 of the delegates were from Communist Party groups or the Young Communist League. Only 23 delegates were claimed from local Labour parties. Others represented Russia Today [magazine] groups, Tenants' Associations, peace and anti-fascist societies, Left Book Club groups, etc., which were largely communist dominated. Of some significance were the 259 delegates representing 112 trade-union organizations,

Childs: The British Communist Party and the War, 193941 though undoutedly many of these too resolution agreed by the congress claimed: were Communists.

245 The

The present war of Britain, France and Germanyis the consequence of capitalist crises and rivalries,and is being waged in the sole interest of the capitalistrulingclass . . . We call upon all membersof the workingclass and of the professions,upon and shopkeepers,smallbusinessmen all who do not profit from war,to oppose its continuance. We call upon them to form a mighty allianceof opposition to the wargovernment all warmongers.3 and Similar conferences were held in Sheffield, Cardiff, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Leeds and Birmingham, addressed by R. Palme Dutt, Arthur Horner, Harry Pollitt, Ivor Montagu, and other leading Communists. Throughout 1940 and the first half of 1941 the Labour Monthly claimed a rising circulation. In December 1939 it had over 10,000 subscribers; this rose by over a thousand in one month. A year later the circulation claimed was over 21,000,which rose higher still. Even allowing for some exaggeration, this was a remarkable development considering the difficulties of any journal in time of war. It is difficult to explain. Perhaps the Labour Monthly had a certain curiosity value as one of the few journals opposing the war. And it must be remembered that it aimed, as its name implies, to attract readers beyond the ranks of the Party. Perhaps too, as Britain's position worsened, a few more people looked a little more seriously at the kind of peace proposals the Communists claimed to be offering. After January 1941, the Labour Monthly's circulation increases were closely connected with the difficulties of the Daily Worker and The Week. But before looking at those difficulties, let us consider how the Party had stood up to the shocks inflicted on it by Soviet policy, and its own unpopularity in Britain. Unfortunately, one cannot write with too much authority on this issue. The files of the Home security services remain secret. As for the Party itself, it naturally attempted to put the best possible face on its internal situation. We know, though, that at first its leaders were divided on the war, with Harry Pollitt and J.R. Campbell rejecting the anti-war line. By the middle of November 1939, however, the two dissidents had capitulated to the majority. They both admitted that their opposition had harmed the Party. Pollitt publicly stated that he had 'played into the hands of the class enemy.14 Campbell admitted his 'stubborn defence of this wrong position did harm to the Party.1 5 This initial split must have aggravated the confusion in the Party over the

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nature of the war. We also know from former members that each new Soviet initiative, the invasions of Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states, produced their crop of resignations. Nevertheless, six months after the outbreak of the war, the Party was claiming a large increase in membership, from 18,000 to 'close on 20,000' in March 1940. How is this claim to be evaluated? The Party admitted that membership still showed 'great uneveness', and that 'the rate of growth of South Wales has not kept up to expectations, whilst important industrial districts like Tyneside and West Riding have each only around 500 members.' But the Party claimed that evacuation of members had helped recruitment by their penetration of new areas. More than half the membership was said to be in London (8,000), Scotland (3,000) and Lancashire 6 (2,000). These were traditional areas of Party support.1 Probably the Party was exaggerating membership figures by not cancelling members who had found their call-up or evacuation a convenient point to let their membership lapse. On the other hand, it is plausible to suggest that the Communists gained some new support. Where did this come from? The Party claimed it came from disillusioned members of the Labour Party, which seems likely. Many of the left of that party found it difficult to believe that Chamberlain and the appeasers of 1938 had become the militant prosecutors of an anti-Hitler war by 1939. In addition, the working-class militants of Scotland, Lancashire and the East End had not forgiven the Conservatives for the harsh conditions of the interwar period. Some of them, by no means all, found it difficult to adjust to the political truce. When they heard Labour leaders agreeing with the Government, they feared another 1931. Of course, the Communist claims relate to the first six months of war. There is some evidence relating to strikes, discussed below, which indicates that, in spite of Communist opposition, even the militants must have responded to the Government's calls for unity in 1940. And it is safe to say that the great majority of the Labour and trade union movement backed their official leaders and supported the war. Also, speaking to former members, one gains the impression that many Communists continued to pay their subscriptions but became, or remained, otherwise inactive. The dedicated few fought on, showing considerable courage, resourcefulness, and improvizing skill in the face of great unpopularity and wartime difficulties. Victimization, leading to unemployment, was still a real possibility, even in January 1940,1 7 and agitators could be prosecuted under a host of Defence Regulations, though few actually were. The Labour Monthly congress and, later, the People's Convention, were indicators that the Party was by no means

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defunct. In December 1940 the Cabinet decided that the Party's main organ, the Daily Worker, should be banned. Though, as we now know, the tide was soon to turn in Britain's favour, the situation looked bleak enough during 1940 and the first half of 1941. Apart from the still actual threat of invasion, and the bombing raids, the Cabinet was concerned about the food situation. An aide-memoire of the War Cabinet of 29 January 1941, stated soberly, 'It is evident that we cannot cut much further (the food rations) without reducing the stamina and morale of the people.'18 It is remarkable in the circumstances, that the Communists had enjoyed so much freedom. Even at that stage, the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, proposed only to ban the Daily Worker and The Week (also a communist-line publication). As a memorandum by Morrison to the War Cabinet put it, 'this step should not be regarded as a prelude to general action against Communist propaganda.' Action against the Party itself, or individual leaders, he regarded as 'undesirable at the present time.'1 9 The Home Secretary did not spell out the reasons for this - practical, technical, tactical or ideological. In February 1940 the War Cabinet received a report from a Committee presided over by the Lord President of the Council. This committee comprised the Lord President of the Council, Minister of Labour and National Service, Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security, First Lord, Minister of Information, and the Attorney General. Its brief was 'to consider what further action, if any, should be taken in regard to the Communist Party.' The Committee concluded 'it is not necessary at the present time to contemplate any general action against the Communist Party.' The Committee had got the opinions of the Production Executive, an organization better able to assess the effects of communist propaganda in the factories, and had been advised that 'There is no definite evidence that Communist activity has so far had a serious effect on the output of war industry.' Communist activity among merchant seamen did cause the Committee some concern and it urged that agitators should be banned from the ports under Defence Regulation 18A. It was also disturbed by communist activity in the aircraft industry:
A considerable number of well-known Communists have succeeded in obfor example, that taining positions in aircraft factories. It is understood, Ben Francis is employed as a time keeper at the works of the Gloucester Aircraft Co. and that Wal Hannington has obtained a post at the Swift Scale Co. works in London, and is Chairman of the Shop Stewards Committee.

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The Committee saw this as part of Communist attempts to disperse leaders into industry to enable them to agitate. It could not see why it should be allowed to happen.20 Before considering the ban on the Daily Worker let us examine briefly the question of communists in industry. In 1940 the number of days lost through strikes 'was lower than it had ever been since statistics were recorded.' Nevertheless, 40,000 workers were involved in strikes. But, as the official war history makes clear, the communist influence was very limited:
In practice the influence of the unofficial shop stewards' movement over the rank and file workers was very limited; this was illustrated by the fact that the number of strikes did not fall but increased after 1941, although they were condemned by the Communist Party.2 1

The official figures back up this view: the number of workers directly
involved in industrial disputes in all industries and services was 1938 1942 1940 - 225,000, 1941 -297,000, 1939 - 246,000, 211,000, 349,000 and 1943 - 454,000.22 These figures would seem to indicate that an improving employment

situation possibly increased the number of strikes in 1939, while fear of invasion, the 'Dunkirk spirit', kept them down in 1940. After that, the number of strikes increased, as Britain's position improved, and war weariness increased. Another factor was possibly the use of (noncommunist) conscientous objectors in certain industries. At any rate, whatever the reasons, communist influence does not seem to have been important in either fomenting strikes or, later, preventing them. Perhaps this should be remembered in today's industrial climate. As was to be expected, the banning of the Daily Worker in January 1941 brought about a certain amount of criticism of Herbert Morrison. Outside the ranks of the Communist Party such prominent people as writers H.G. Wells23 and George Bernard Shaw, Lord Ponsonby, a former Liberal and later a colleague of Ramsay MacDonald, and Members of Parliament Sir Richard Acland, Aneurin Bevan, S.O. Davies and Sidney Silverman, opposed the ban. Naturally, the Party rallied its prominent fellow travellers to express their indignation, chief among whom at the time were the 'Red' Dean of Canterbury, Hewlett Johnson and D.N. Pritt, KC, MP, who had been expelled from the Labour Party for his continued support for the Communist line. Aneurin Bevan believed that as the Government enjoyed massive newspaper support, not to mention the BBC, it could afford to permit the Daily Worker, much as he detested the paper's policy towards the war. The proper

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course was to prosecute the paper in the courts if it published articles which were subversive of the war effort.24 He wrongly believed that its suppression was intended to serve as an instrument of intimidation against the press as a whole. As Morrison reminded his colleagues in the Cabinet, the Government did allow a great deal of press criticism:
There is in the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Pictorial much vituperative criticism of members of the Government and much carping at features of the Government's policy, but it is by no means clear that there is a deliberate intention on the part of those responsible for the control of these papers to suggest that they are examples of irresponsible journalism exploiting all opportunities for scandal-mongering.2

They were, he concluded, within the British tradition. Mr Gallacher's defence of the Daily Worker in the Commons was both vigorous and clever:
The Daily Worker not only did not try to break morale, but I assert here, before the shelter queen or anyone else, that the Daily Worker played a very big part in strengthening the morale of the people of London. It advocated and encouraged the opening of the tubes and tunnels. It was the first to advocate shelter committees in order to unify and maintain the morale of the people. Will the Minister deny that?26 There is not a grievance of any kind affecting workers, soldiers and their

has which the Daily Worker not dependents,the aged and the impoverished
ventilated and for the remedy of which it has not put forward concrete proposals .. . There is nothing subversive about that. We hate Hitlerism in whatever form it may manifest itself. On the editorial board of the Daily Worker are four lads who were fighting in Spain against Hitler and Mussolini when Members of this House were supporting Hitler and Mussolini through the treacherous policy of non-intervention. And many more of our lads are lying dead there. Do you think we forget those lads? Do we forget our comrades in the concentration camps in Germany?27

If the Communist Party hated the Nazis so much, what was it really after? Some genuinely perplexed people on the left, both old friends and friendly, non-Party, critics, hoped they would find an answer at the
People's Convention which met in London on 12 January 1941. In the Commons, Quintin Hogg, the Conservative MP for Oxford, called the Convention 'a criminal conspiracy designed to bring about a Treaty of Brest-Litovsk for this country.'28 J. McGovern, the ILP anti-war MP, said, 'this is not a genuine anti-war conference but is merely conforming to the Stalin-Hitler Pact.'29 He was not far out. The People's Convention attempted to be a much more elaborate

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affair than the earlier Labour Monthly conference. In numbers it certainly was. Held in London on 12 January 1941, it attracted 2,234 delegates claiming to represent 1,200,000 citizens. Of the delegates just over half were said to be from trade union or factory groups. Nearly half of the delegates were from London, which could have been partly due to the difficulties of travel at that time. But most areas were represented. Judging from the official accounts of the Convention, it went off as so many other communist-organized front meetings before and since. The Standing Orders Committee 'recommended' 26 people to be elected from the Convention to a 'National Committee'. In addition, two representatives were to be elected from important districts. Most of the 26 were known to be Communist Party members or as fellow travellers who never let the Party down. Among them were Messrs. Pritt and Gallacher from the Commons, Palme Dutt, Professor Haldane, Arthur Horner, the communist miners' leader, Beatrix Lehmann, the Dean of Canterbury, Rev. Stanley Evans, and Lt-Commander Young, well-known for his support of communist causes. Messages of support from Paul Robeson, the Black singer, Theodore Dreiser, the American writer, and even, it was claimed, from Mao Tse-tung, could not disguise the Convention's isolation nearer home. There were no prominent British writers or artists present. More important, the limited appeal of the Convention is indicated by the absence of any national trade union leader or any MP, including pacifist MPs, other than Pritt and Gallacher. Among the more important trade union delegates were, apart from Horner, Will Paynter of the South Wales Miners Federation, and Hugh Scanlon of Metro Vickers of Manchester.3 The total unreality of the Convention's assumptions was exposed (unwittingly) by Palme Dutt:
We declare that a People's Peace is possible and can be won by the united struggle of all the peoples in the warring countries. The advance of the working people's struggle already in France, in Germany, in Italy, in the United States, in India and the colonies, show that the forces of the people are warring for the realisation of a People's Peace.

How the communists hoped to bring about a 'People's Peace' without inflicting a Brest-Litovsk on Britain was never really clear. Of

course, the communist case was not entirely false. They could claim they had opposed fascism when the men of Munich were appeasing it.
They had a right to be suspicious of such people still in places of influence - though most of the Government were not ot this stamp.

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They also rightly pointed out that Britain had no clear war aims. Pritt argued that the Government was planning a 'Super-Versailles' for Germany which would lead to a third world war.3 1 Like the Nazis, they could argue that although Britain spoke in terms of freedom, it ruled the largest colonial empire in history. Harry Pollitt wrote,
The Indian people know only too well that the claim to fight for freedom and democracy is all very well as a means of deceiving peoples as to the real motives of war . . . The Indian people have not been blind to the propaganda which declares 'that when Britain has won the war, then freedom will be restored to Belgium, Holland, Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, etc.'; nor are they blind to the fact that the Churchill Government which sponsors this type of propaganda . .. to the peoples of those countries to revolt against Nazism, itself suppresses with an iron hand any attempt on the part of Indians to try and realise their aims of independence and their right to govern their own country.3

It was not an accident that Indira Nehru, daughter of the Indian Congress leader, then jailed by the British, was at the Convention, or that Krishna Menon, future Indian Defence Minister had been at the earlier Labour Monthly congress. Some Indians, in despair, had even turned to Nazi Germany for help in securing their independence. Thus far, many in the Labour Party could agree with Pollitt, Pritt and Gallacher. But they recognized that the specific communist 'remedy' for all these failings would lead to even greater disaster. For though they rarely spelled it out, the communists were working along the lines of revolutionary defeatism preached by Lenin in 1917. As Douglas Hyde, a key witness, wrote later:
having the experience of Russia in 1917 ... it was not surprising that Dunkirk, when it came, troubled us not at all and served only to make what we regarded as being the almost inevitable defeat of Britain appear as a magnificent opportunity . . .

industrial disputes, through the spread of disaffection among members of the armed forces and through exploiting every possible grievance, political, social, economic or industrial, upon which we could seize.

of the People's Convention,through trying to create war-weariness, through

Taking this to heart we administered all the blows we could, through the tactic

It is significant that the communist publishers, Lawrence and Wishart, printed Lenin's Socialism and War, in a cheap edition, three
times in 1940. In that we find the classic formulation:

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A revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot help wishing the defeat of its government, it cannot fail to see the connection between the government's military reverses and the increased opportunity for overthrowing it.34

Such a policy pursued by the British communists was based on the foolish assumption that the German workers would be able and willing to overthrow Nazism by themselves. It was based on the false comparison of the Jew in Berlin and the Kaffir in Johannesburg made by Haldane. In the last months before the German-Soviet conflict, the British communists continued with their efforts at 'revolutionary defeatism', and over and over denied the possibility of conflict between Hitler and Stalin. In the Labour Monthly, Koni Zilliacus sniggered,
the USSR has made itself a military power so great that the Fascist regimes

fear to attack it and are finding the Western easiermeat. pluto-democracies Thisis most vexatious. That was in April 1941. In the June issue of the same journal 'Mark Four' predicted, 'One move on Hitler's part to "March into the Ukraine" and not all the wishful thinking of the British press could save him and the Nazi system from complete annihilation. And Hitler knows it.' By 18 July the Home Secretary could console his Cabinet colleagues that, as he put it, the Pollitt faction had gained ascendancy in the communist leadership and the Party had therefore decided, following the Nazi invasion of Russia on 22 June, to support the war.3 5 In the September issue of Labour Monthly Councillor Jack Owens was writing on 'How to increase War Production: 1. The Campaign in the Workshops.'

NOTES

20 2. Hansard, September1939, col. 1001. 3. Letters to the New Statesmanand Nation, 23 and 30 September1939.
4. Hansard, 20 September 1939. 5. D.N. Pritt, Light on Moscow (London 1939), 142.

1. Hansard, 31 July 1939, col. 2085.

6. DouglasHyde, I Believed(London1952), 70.

Childs: The British Communist

Party and the War, 193941

253

7. Labour Monthly, November 1939. 8. Stirling Journal and Advertiser, 28 September, 5 and 12 October 1939. 9. The Communist Party In Wartime, The Record of Activities and Documents issued up to 15 March 1940, published by the CP, see introduction. The election results are from that source. 10. Emile Burs, The Soviet Union and Finland (London 1940). 11. Harry Pollitt, The War and the Labour Movement (CP 12 June 1940), 4. 12. Ivor Montagu, The Federal Union Myth (CP 27 February 1940), 5. 13. See Labour Monthly, March 1940. 14. The Communist Party in Wartime, op. cit., 34. 15. Ibid., 33. 16. Ibid., 21. 17. In December 1939 there were 1.3 million unemployed, The Times, 9 January 1940. 18. WP (41), 17, 29 January 19141, The Imports Situation. 19. WP (41), 7,11 January 1941,The 'Daily Worker'. 20. WP (41), 27, 10 February 1941, Communist Activities 21. P. Inman, Labour In the Munitions Industries, (London 1957), 401. 22. British Labour Statistics Historical Abstract 1886-1968, Department of Employment and Productivity (London 1971), 396, Table 197. Ibid., 393 gives figures for certain war industries only. These confirm the above picture. 23. Labour Monthly, March 1941. 24. Hansard, 28 January 1941. 25. WP (40) 402, 8 October 1940, On Subversive Newspaper Propaganda. 26. Hansard, 28 January 1941, col. 497. 27. Ibid., cols. 499-500 and 501. 28. Ibid., 21 November 1940. 29. Ibid., 19 December 1940. 30. The People Speak: The People's Convention. The Official Report (London 1941), 35. 31. D.N. Pritt, Choose Your Future (London 1941), 61. 32. Labour Monthly, June 1941. 33. Hyde,op.cit., 74. 34. V.I. Lenin, Socialism and War (London 1940), 24. 35. WP (41) 169,18 July 1941,Pollitt Faction Now Dominant.