Far-left politics in the United Kingdom
"[1] He names specifically "orthodox communists, those influenced by the New Left Marxism of the 1960s, followers of Trotsky, of Mao Tse-tung, of Fidel Castro, and even Enver Hoxha.
[2] John Callaghan likewise focuses his The Far Left in British Politics on the five largest Marxist organisations, namely the 'official' Communist Party and the four most influential Trotskyist groups.
This emigre tradition continued throughout the century, for example German anarchist Johann Most established his Freiheit journal in London in 1879; editors included the Belgian Victor Dave.
The immediate issue which caused a significant portion of the hard left to split was the debate at the 5th Congress of the Second International in Paris, over the entry of Marxist Alexandre Millerand into the "bourgeois" French government of Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau.
The period leading up to the First World War saw a renewal of industrial militancy outside of the mainstream Labour Movement's traditional commitment to parliamentary politics.
Matters came to a head in 1916, when the defeated Hyndman left to found the National Socialist Party, while his internationalist opponents Alf watts, Zelda Kahan and Theodore Rothstein supported the Zimmerwald Conference.
Since before 1900, one of the key issues splitting the British far left had been the attitude towards a trade union-based Labour Party, and such divisions had not been diminished once such an organization had been formed.
The Labour leadership's lack of enthusiasm for the Bolshevik revolution, therefore, was the last straw for many BSPers.Studies of the period have revealed that in terms of participation, the Celtic fringe were over-represented, while the English were under-represented in the early days of British communism.
[15][16] In particular, the communists gained working-class support among the Welsh in the Rhondda Valley and the Scots in West Fife (both being major mining areas at the time).
As well as this "Celtic" tinge, prominent in the East End of London (Hackney, Whitechapel and Bethnal Green)[17] were Jewish diaspora who had recently fled pogroms in the Russian Empire.
In Europe, communist alternatives to liberalism were rivaled by ultra-nationalism; this included local variants such as the British Union of Fascists, whom the CPGB exchanged violence with (most famously at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936).
From 1939 to 1941, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was in place; in response to CPGB General Secretary Harry Pollitt supporting the British declaration of war on Germany, he was replaced by Rajani Palme Dutt.
With the launching of Operation Barbarossa, the position of the CPGB changed course swiftly; the Marxist-Leninists now backed the Allied cause in the Second World War against the Axis powers.
The WIL was pro-war, while the RSL was more fractured; the leadership adopted Trotsky's Proletarian Military Policy, while the Left Fraction and the Center supported "revolutionary defeatism.
Following the defeat of the Axis powers and the brief period of public prominence for the CPGB, the international political system realigned into the start of the Cold War, which pitted the Western Allies (including Britain), against the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.
This did not just include the Tory right, but prominent elements of the mainstream Labour Party, such as Ernest Bevin, who viewed the United States instead as an ally.
While Trotskyist groups had existed prior to the 1950s, it was during this time that the key figures who would go on to define British Trotskyism for decades and lead it to becoming the most prominent far-left tendency with the decline of Marxist-Leninism, namely Gerry Healy, Ted Grant and Tony Cliff, founded their own organisations.
[25] One of the most significant defections in the aftermath of this was the resignation of a number of Communist Party Historians Group intellectuals (with the exception of Eric Hobsbawm), who defined themselves as against "the tankies."
The New Left was co-founded by Gramscian-inspired Stuart Hall who played a key role in the introduction of identity politics currents such as cultural studies and is called the "godfather of multiculturalism."
For the more ardent Marxist-Leninists who lamented what they regarded as the revisionist slander against Stalin, the Sino-Soviet split allowed them the opportunity to align with the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong as a suitable alternative to the Khrushchevite-Moscow line.
In 1963, the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity under Michael McCreery broke away from the CPGB to become the first British far-left grouping advocating Maoism.
[25] In Continental Europe during the early 1970s, there were instances of the new radicalism turning into Marxist-Leninist paramilitary campaigns (such as the Red Brigades in Italy and the Baader-Meinhof Group in Germany).
[32] The non-communist Provisionals, who spearheaded the republican campaign, garnered "critical support" from some British Trotskyist groups, most prominently the IMG[33] early on, under the rationale of anti-imperialism and much later in the 1980s had the Trotskyist-orientated People's Democracy merge into PSF.
Prominent figures in the Eurocommunist-push were Dave Cook, Sue Slipman and those associated with Martin Jacques's Marxism Today (the monthly theoretical journal of CPGB).
This led to some unorthodox alliances, such as David Yaffe's Trotskyist RCG supporting the Soviet Union's Comecon as a force of anti-imperialism (Frank Furedi's RCP; later creators of Living Marxism; split in 1978 over this).
Such divisions made it difficult for the party to deal with the ascent of Margaret Thatcher and her economic policies of neoliberalism; privatising major parts of the British industrial sector and moving towards a service economy.
[44] Working within the Labour Party, they were able to get Terry Fields, Dave Nellist and Pat Wall elected as MPs,[45] as well as having major influence over Liverpool City Council, until Neil Kinnock moved to expel the organisation.
In Britain, the Eurocommunist leadership of the Communist Party under Nina Temple officially dissolved the organisation in November 1991,[46] abandoning all pretense of adherence to Marxist-Leninist politics.
