Duncan Bowie on hunting communists
Anti-Communism in Britain during the early Cold War by Matthew Gerth published by University of London Press
The subheading of the book is A Very British Witch Hunt. I will admit that I have never liked the use of the term witch hunt for faction fights on the left, not just because the comparison with witches is just not appropriate, but because attempts by one political group within a political party or trade union to exclude people with whom they disagree is a natural if unpleasant part of political life and a practice operated by all political groupings, including the British far left and within the British Communist Party itself. We should not therefore be surprised that a social democratic party such as the British Labour Party seeks to exclude individuals who are not social democrats.
Gerth’s study is well researched. The first chapter focuses on two rather eccentric individuals, the ex-diplomat Lord Vansittart (a leading pre-WW2 critic of German fascism) and the journalist, Waldrom Smithers, who both got over-excited about communist infiltration into British politics in the early post-war years. Rather curiously Gerth seems to consider allegations that communists in Britain worked in the interests of the Soviet Union as smears, though this was openly admitted by most communists in Britain. Ironically the Communist Party in Britain actually supported the Labour government, mainly because that was in the Soviet interest, a position clearly set out by Harry Pollitt, which led to a number of Leninists who supported revolution rather than parliamentary democracy, leaving the Communist Party. Gerth’s focus however is not on the Communist Party but on the Labour party, the Government’s and trade unions attitude to communism.
It is fair to say that the Labour Party was unhappy with Communists being active in the Labour Party, partly reflecting the persecution of social democrats by communist governments in Eastern Europe, which explained the anti-communism of party officials such as Denis Healey, the party’s international secretary, himself a former communist, and Morgan Phillips the party general secretary, who also happened to chair the Labour and socialist international, as well as Herbert Morrison and Attlee.
Gerth also analyses the attempts to limit the role of communists in trade unions, with many trade unions and local trades councils seeking to exclude communists. The leading trade unionists, Arthur Deakin of the Transport and General Workers Union and Vincent Tewson of the TUC were staunch ant-communists. Attlee and his Minister of labour, George Issacs overstated the role of communists in the wave of strikes, notably in the coal mines and the docks, though some involved communists, unofficial strikes were generally not supported by the communist miners’ leader, Arthur Horner or the CPGB leadership under Pollitt. The strikes related to genuine local grievances, rather than being part of a Soviet plot to overturn the British government.
Gerth also examines the role of a range of right-wing organisations, such as the Economic League, the League of Empire Loyalists, the American sponsored Common Cause and the British Housewives League, which moved from opposing food rationing to attacking communists, and the rather mysterious but widely supported Moral Rearmament Association. He also examines the role of MI5 who were used by the Attlee government to collect information on communist activity, often in collaboration with organisations such as the Economic League, but also at times supplying information to right wing trade union leaders. They also collected information on communists in government employment, which in some cases led to dismissal. While the purge was not on the scale of the work of Joseph McCarthy’s UnAmerican Activities Committee, Gerth provides new information on this process which is not widely known.
It is interesting that the secret service thought Attlee’s government was overstating the role of British communists, and were clearly unhappy with some of Attlee’s more dramatic claims. It is interesting that Churchill’s post 1951 government was less concerned about British communists than their predecessors. This book is well worth reading. It is however disappointing (and distracting) that the book has a number of basic errors which should have been picked up before publication.