He was the second of six children of Samuel Pollitt (1863–1933), a blacksmith's striker, and his wife, Mary Louisa (1868–1939), a cotton spinner, daughter of William Charlesworth, a joiner.

[2] Pollitt gained experience leading a strike in Southampton in 1915[1][3] and later described being inspired by the 1917 October Revolution, saying it showed that "workers like me ... had defeated the boss class".

[1] In September 1919, Pollitt was appointed full-time national organiser of the Hands Off Russia campaign to protest against Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, for which Pankhurst had obtained funding from Moscow.

Whilst there, Pollitt helped convince London dock workers not to load the freighter SS Jolly George on 10 May 1920, as she was bound with munitions for Poland, which at that time was fighting against Soviet Russia in the Polish–Soviet War.

[6] Pollitt failed to prevent a number of other ships laden with arms for Poland, including the Danish steamer Neptune on 1 May 1920, and two Belgian barges.

[9] According to the October 1921 issue of Freedom, on his return Pollitt stated that he had seen evidence that Russian anarchists were plotting to restore Tsarism and spoke approvingly of the suppression of anarchism in Russia.

[10] Pollitt was involved in a criminal case against five men he accused of kidnapping him in March 1925 whilst he was on his way to address a meeting of communists in Liverpool.

His best man and witness was fellow CPGB activist and organiser Percy Glading, who would later be convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and imprisoned.

During the same visit, Pollitt met privately with Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin, who, over Pollitt's protests, ordered that the CPGB should abandon its "United Front" policy and campaign as widely as possible at the next election, even where the CPGB stood no chance of winning and would draw votes away from the Labour candidate, thus allowing the Conservatives to win.

Pollitt replaced Albert Inkpin, who had attracted disapproval from the Comintern by opposing the "Class-against-Class" policy and perceived softness towards others on the left.

[22] Pollitt made clear in his public statements his loyalties to the Soviet Union and to CPSU General Secretary Joseph Stalin.

[25] In 1934 Pollitt and Tom Mann, then-treasurer of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement (NUWM), were summonsed on charges of sedition in relation to speeches they gave in Trealaw and Ferndale in Wales.

Whilst there he was invited to make a broadcast on the BBC radio programme The Citizen and His Government, commenting on the difference between the UK and the USSR.

[31] Twenty years after Cohen's death, Pollitt requested information from Moscow about whether she was still alive, stating, untruthfully, that there was press interest in Britain about her whereabouts.

They revealed the Comintern's close supervision of the Communist Party and Pollitt, as well as the substantial financial support the CPGB received from Moscow.

One 1936 coded instruction advised Pollitt to publicise the plight of Ernst Thälmann, a German Communist leader who had been arrested by the Nazis and who later died at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Pollitt replied that he was "having difficulties" getting British statesmen to make public declarations supporting Thälmann but that they promised they would speak privately with German officials in London.

In one of the more amusing dispatches, Pollitt (1936) informed his Soviet contact about a recent visit to France to make campaign appearances for candidates from the French Communist Party.

"[41][42][43] Pollitt also tasked Gray, whose class background would make her less conspicuous aboard an ocean liner than the CPGB's mostly working-class membership, with delivering money, instructions, and a questionnaire to a contact in India.

This was a strategy that assumed that the goals of the Communist Party could be accelerated by quickening the defeat of Britain in the war against Nazi Germany.

[46] After Operation Barbarossa, Harry Pollitt became a strong supporter of the opening of a second front in Europe against Nazi Germany by the Western Allies.

[60] Pollitt supported the 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia, characterising it as the work of "millions of lads" who were "led by their Shop stewards" to overthrow capitalism.

The programme, which was championed by Pollitt, committed the CPGB to independence from Moscow, and a constitutional or parliamentary (as opposed to revolutionary) path to power.

He went on to say that "[n]ever before in the history of humanity ha[d] there been such universal grief" as the people of the world "mourned him with tears in their eyes and with deep uncontrollable sorrow".

Pollitt's embarrassment was heightened by the fact that he had been present in Moscow for the party congress at which the speech took place, but along with the other foreign delegates had been excluded from the session at which it had been given.

[66] Pollitt, suffering from worsening health in his final years, resigned as General Secretary in May 1956, with John Gollan succeeding him, and was appointed CP Chairman.

When Khruschev's denunciation of Stalin was formally made public the following month, Pollitt stated that he was "too old to go into reverse and denigrate a man he had admired above all others for more than a quarter of a century".

[60][67] The Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution of November 1956 made the CPGB crisis worse, particularly as the party had taken the position that the Eastern Bloc countries, of which Hungary was one, were allowed to do what they pleased.

[73][74] After years of worsening health, Pollitt died at age 69 of a cerebral haemorrhage while returning on the SS Orion from a speaking tour of Australia on 27 June 1960.

[83] The song was heavily criticised in the April 1972 edition of Marxism Today, the official journal of the CPGB, as "sickening" and "full of the vilest insults against the memory of Harry Pollitt".