The Enemy within: Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party

IMMEDIATELY AFTER the Bolshevik revolution Lenin turned to Britain. The British Communist Party was founded in 1920 on his instructions and using Soviet m_oney smuggled in by Comintern agents. Many people thought revolution was just around the corner. In the ‘twenties the Party talked of armed insurrection and its leaders were arrested and jailed for sedition. In the ‘thirties it fought Mosley’s Fascists, organized hunger marches and recruited volunteers for the Spanish Civil War. Then, on Stalin's orders, it performed one of the sharpest LI-turns ever seen in politics: it first backed Britain's war effort, then damned it after Stalin’s pact with Hitler, then changed back again when Hitler invaded Russia. Despite this the Party was briefly respected, even successful, after 1945. But the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia destroyed its credibility. After vicious in-fighting throughout the Thatcher years it collapsed in 1991 . The Enemy Within tells the full story for the first time. It examines the idealism and cynicism, the successes and failures, and the Party’s extraordinary end. What had it hoped to achieve? Why did it become an instrument of Soviet foreign policy? Did it influence governments and unions? Was there a connection with spies like Philby? Were the security service fears justified? The story contains real heroism: many faced prison for their beliefs or died for them in Spain. There was also deceit: denials of Moscow Gold; and deception by governments who used the party as an excuse to curtail freedoms. It is a strange story, with extraordinary characters like the unshakeable Stalinist Bill Rust or the coldly patrician Palme Dutt who rarely met real workers but was the only man Moscow trusted. Bound up in the story are celebrated defectors like Frank Chapple, who exposed ballot rigging in the Electricians’ Union, and politicians like Denis Healey and Michael Foot who became pillars of the Labour Party. This is a remarkable chapter of British history now explored as it deserves. Very light foxing to top of text block b25.…