Cecil John L'Estrange Malone (7 September 1890 – 25 February 1965) was a British politician and pioneer naval aviator who served as the United Kingdom's first Communist member of parliament.

[5] During the First World War, Malone commanded Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) planes in the Cuxhaven Raid on 25 December 1914.

[5][8] Malone was appointed to the Plans Division of the Admiralty in 1918 before becoming the First British Air Attache at the Embassy of the United Kingdom, Paris.

"[1] On 13 September 1919, with a passport endorsed by the British Foreign Office in hand, Cecil Malone embarked on the S.S. Arcturus for Helsinki.

There Malone, who intended to visit Soviet Russia despite the blockade of the country, unexpectedly met up with another individual planning on crossing over to Petrograd.

[11] In Moscow, Malone met with Maxim Litvinov, then a top official in the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, with whom he had a long discussion.

[14] Accompanying Malone on the trip were the head of the Supreme Council of National Economy (VSNKh), Alexei Rykov; chief of food supply for the Russian Republic, Alexander Tsiurupa; and People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky.

He found the mission of the Bolshevik government in attempting economic reconstruction to be compelling and emerged from his trip a committed communist.

"The history of Allied negotiations and transactions with Russia appears to have been a chain of catastrophes and mistakes" he wrote: "...[I]t seems there was a culpable lack of foresight in visualizing the forces behind the Revolution.

It seems incredible that such slender excuses for intervention should have been allowed to hold good for so long.... [N]ow we find ourselves supporting partisan leaders in Russia by the supply of arms and munitions at the expense of the British taxpayer, and in addition we find our Government carrying on an inhuman and illegal blockade against the Russian people, the result of which during the coming winter months will indeed be terrible.

"[16]Upon his return to England, Malone became active in the Hands Off Russia campaign, and in November 1919 he officially joined the proto-Communist British Socialist Party (BSP).

He attended the London Communist Unity Convention held 31 July and 1 August 1921, at which he was elected to the new party's governing Central Committee.

Whatever his theoretical weaknesses, he was a man of passion, moved by the revolutionary tremors that were shaking the world, full of wrath and indignation against the powers that be, and after a fiery speech in the Albert Hall on November 7, 1920, he was charged with sedition under Regulation 42 of the Defense of the Realm Act ... [h]e was sentenced to six months in the Second Division.

"[19]The line which landed Malone in jail related to his argument that during a revolutionary crisis, excesses might occur resulting in the killing of some prominent members of the bourgeoisie.

He was re-elected at the 1929 general election, and served in Ramsay MacDonald's government as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Pensions, Frederick Roberts, in 1931.