Harry Pollitt

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For the locomotive engineer, see Harry Pollitt (engineer).

Harry Pollitt
Harry Pollitt 1925.jpg
Pollitt in 1925
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain
In office
June 1941 – 13 May 1956
Preceded byRajani Palme Dutt
Succeeded byJohn Gollan
In office
July 1929 – October 1939
Preceded byJ. R. Campbell
Succeeded byRajani Palme Dutt
General Secretary of the National Minority Movement
In office
1924–1929
Personal details
Born
Harry Pollitt

(1890-11-22)22 November 1890
Droylsden, Lancashire, England
Died27 June 1960(1960-06-27) (aged 69)
Aboard SS Orion
Cause of deathCerebral haemorrhage
CitizenshipBritish
NationalityEnglish
Political partyCommunist Party of Great Britain
Other political
affiliations		Workers' Socialist Federation

Harry Pollitt (1890 –1960) was a leading British communist, trade unionist, and anti-colonial revolutionary, most famous for serving as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).[1] Pollitt spent most of his life advocating communism, and was particularly inspired by the political beliefs of both Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Pollitt used his connections with the Soviet Union to create the British Battalion of the International Brigades, and helped recruit the majority of the approximately 2,500 British volunteers who fought for the Spanish republic against nationalist forces backed by Hitler and Mussolini. Pollitt was a life-long opponent of both fascism and British colonialism, using his position as a communist leader to organise CPGB activists to secretly smuggle funding to both communist resistance in Nazi Germany[2] and Indian communists resisting British colonialism.[3]

Biography[]

Early life[]

Pollitt was born 22 November 1890 in Droylsden, Lancashire. 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. Pollitt's parents were socialists and it was his mother, a member of the Independent Labour Party, who provided the youngster with his first induction into the principles and local networks of socialism. She was a member of the Openshaw Socialist Society[4] and regularly took Harry with her to events in their Socialist Hall. Theirs was an especially close relationship and Pollitt found in his mother both a confidante and a model of working-class dignity in the face of affliction.[1]

Three of his siblings died in infancy. He identified as working class. His formal education, at the local school, ended when he was thirteen. Pollitt was a boilermaker by trade and he frequently travelled around the country in this connection.

In 1915, whilst living in Southampton, he led a strike of boilermakers.

On 10 October 1925, Pollitt married Marjorie Brewer in Caxton Hall, Westminster. 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.[5][6]

Communist union leader[]

A USSR stamp of 1970 commemorating Harry Pollitt and his role in preventing the SS Jolly George from carrying arms to opponents of the Bolshevik forces.

In 1919 Pollitt was involved in the Hands Off Russia campaign to protest against Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. As part of this campaign, London dock workers refused to load munitions bound for White movement forces onto the freighter on 10 May 1920. After a five-day delay, the munitions were off-loaded on 15 May 1920. Pollitt later recounted the incident in his pamphlet "A War Was Stopped!"

At the end of the war, Pollitt joined Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers' Socialist Federation, which became the Communist Party (British Section of the Third International). As a member of this group he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain when it was formed in mid-1920. Pankhurst soon left the party, but Pollitt remained. He was heavily influenced by the Communist intellectual Rajani Palme Dutt and the two remained close allies for many years. From 1924 to 1929 Pollitt was General Secretary of the National Minority Movement, a Communist-led united front within the trade unions.

In 1921 Pollitt visited the Soviet Union. 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.[7]

In 1925, Pollitt married Marjory Edna Brewer (b. 1902), a communist schoolteacher; the marriage eventually produced a son and a daughter. During the same year, Pollitt was one of 12 members of the Communist Party convicted at the Old Bailey under the Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797 and one of the five defendants sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment.

General Secretary of the CPGB[]

In 1929 the CPGB elected him General Secretary with Joseph Stalin's personal approval. On his appointment Stalin told him "You have taken a difficult job on, but I believe you will tackle it all right".[8] He held the position, with a brief interruption during World War II, until 1956, when he was then made Chairman of the Party, a position he held until his death four years later aboard an ocean liner carrying him home from a visit to Australia and New Zealand.[1] Writing in 1929, Pollitt stated that he saw his role as defending the CPSU "through thick and thin".[9]

In 1933 Pollitt was involved in a mission to smuggle funding for German communists resisting the Nazis. Pollitt met with communist activist Alf Salisbury who would then take the money to Germany.[2] In 1934 Pollitt organised a mission to smuggle funding to Indian communists to resist the British colonial occupation of India.[3] To achieve this, Pollitt dispatched communist activist Noreen Branson to Mumbai to deliver funding to Indian communist revolutionaries.[3]

From 1933 until November 1939 Pollitt was in direct radio contact with Moscow as CPGB's "code holder". Contact ceased in November 1939 when the secret code used to communicate with him was changed, though it was re-established in 1941.[10]

In his public statements, Pollitt was loyal to the Soviet Union and to CPSU General Secretary Joseph Stalin. He was a defender of the Moscow Trials in which Stalin murdered or otherwise disposed of his political and military opponents. In the Daily Worker of 12 March 1936 Pollitt told the world that "the trials in Moscow represent a new triumph in the history of progress". The article was illustrated by a photograph of Stalin with Nikolai Yezhov, himself shortly to vanish and his photographs airbrushed from history by NKVD archivists.[11]

When Pollitt's personal friend Rose Cohen, to whom he had proposed marriage on a number of occasions,[12] was put on trial in Moscow in 1937, CPGB opposed efforts by the British government to get Cohen released, describing her arrest as an internal affair of the Soviet Union. Pollitt privately tried to intervene on her behalf, but by the time he did so she had already been shot.[13] 20 years after her death, Pollitt requested information from Moscow about whether she was still alive, stating, untruthfully, that there was press interest in Britain about her whereabouts.[14]

In 1935 Pollitt travelled to Moscow. Whilst there he was invited to make a broadcast on the BBC radio program The Citizen and His Government commenting on the difference between the UK and the USSR. However, the invitation was withdrawn after opposition form the foreign office. He would not appear on BBC radio until the 1945 election.[15]

Pollitt also organised a protest against Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in 1934.[16]

During the Spanish Civil War Harry Pollitt vetoed George Orwell's application to join the International Brigades. Pollitt's veto was based on what he believed to be Orwell's political unreliability.[17]

The Labour History Archive and Study Centre at the People's History Museum in Manchester holds the collection of the Communist Party of Great Britain. This collection includes the papers of Harry Pollitt, which covers the years 1920 to 1960.[18]

In 1939, Pollitt defied Moscow by opposing the introduction of conscription in Britain.[19]

Views of World War II[]

Harry Pollitt speaks to a large crowd outside the British Museum in support of the Aid to Russia Fund, 1941.

In September 1939, despite the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, he welcomed the British declaration of war on Nazi Germany. When this turned out to be contrary to the Comintern line (as Rajani Palme Dutt, who succeeded him as General Secretary, had warned him it would be), he was forced to resign.[20] By November 1939 Pollitt had disavowed his previous pro-war position saying that by supporting the war he had "'played into the hands of the class enemy".[21]

During 1940 the party followed a policy of "revolutionary defeatism". This was described by Douglas Hyde as regarding "the almost inevitable defeat of Britain [...] as a magnificent opportunity".[22] For his part Pollitt criticised the war policies of the Chamberlain government, describing them as seeking to exploit the war against "Hitler's fascism" to "impose certain aspects of that same fascism on the workers".[23]

On instructions from Georgi Dimitrov in Moscow, Pollitt was retained in a six-member political bureau after his removal.[24] He was reinstated as the leader of CPGB after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, again, in response to instructions received from Moscow. Moscow also overturned Dutt's previous position of criticising the Churchill and charactersing the war as a struggle for socialism, instead endorsing Pollitt's position of offering full support to the Churchill government and avoiding inflaming anti-socialist opinion.[25]

Harry Pollitt giving a public speech to workers in Whitehall, London, 1941

Political activities[]

Pollitt contested many parliamentary elections. In a 1940 by-election in the Silvertown division of West Ham he received on 966 votes to the Labour candidate's 14,343.[26] He fought Rhondda East several times; in 1945 he was within a thousand votes of winning the seat from the Labour candidate.

Pollitt defended the 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia, characterising it as the work of "millions of lads" "led by their Shop Stewards" to overthrow capitalism.[27] In 1952 Pollitt released a pamphlet entitled "Malaya: Stop the War!" against the British anti-insurgency operations in Malaya, where British troops were fighting communist rebels. In the pamphlet he described the operations as being a war "to defend the corrupt colonial system" and stating that "For the Tory rubber and tin profiteers there is plenty to gain, but for the British people the only dividends are death, more taxation, cuts in social services, and attacks on wages and working conditions".[28]

On the death of Stalin, Pollitt wrote that he had been "the greatest man of our time". 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".[29]

The advent of Nikita Khrushchev presented CPGB with problems. CPGB had followed the Moscow line to attack Tito's neutralist government in Yugoslavia, however when Krushchev visited Belgrade in 1955 CPGB was forced to recant these attacks. Pollitt faced another crisis when Khrushchev, in his 1956 Secret Speech, attacked the legacy of Stalin. 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 form the session at which it had been given.[30]

The Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 made the crisis in the party worse, particularly as CPGB had taken the position that the Eastern Block countries, of which Hungary was one, were allowed to do what they pleased.[30] Most of its intellectual figures (including Doris Lessing and E. P. Thompson) and many ordinary members resigned. Others, for example Eric Hobsbawm, chose to stay in the Party to try to reform it. Pollitt, depressed both by physical illness (including temporary blindness) and his increasing political isolation, resigned as General Secretary and was appointed CP Chairman.

In this position, Pollitt disagreed with Khrushchev's revisionism and supported Stalin. "He's staying there as long as I'm alive", he said of the portrait of Stalin that hung in his living room.

In 1959 when British communist journalist Alan Winnington (whom Pollitt had recruited to the CPGB) became disillusioned with Chinese politics, Pollitt arranged for him to travel from China to East Germany, where Winnington spent the remainder of his life as an author and movie actor. Winnington was extremely grateful, and after Pollitt's death he described him as "the greatest Englishman I have known."[31]

Death and legacy[]

Harry Pollitt died, aged 69, of a cerebral haemorrhage, after years of worsening health, while returning on the SS Orion from a speaking tour of Australia on 27 June 1960. He was cremated at Golders Green on 9 July, and was survived by his wife and two children, Brian and Jean.

In 1971, Pollitt's devotion to the Soviet cause and to international communism was acknowledged by Moscow when the Soviet navy named a ship after him.[32] A plaque dedicated to the memory of Pollitt was unveiled by the Mayor of Tameside on 22 March 1995 outside Droylsden Library.[1] He is also ironically commemorated in the humorous song "The Ballad of Harry Pollitt", which actually circulated most popularly in his lifetime. Part of the lyrics dealt with his death.[33]

The Ballad of Harry Pollitt

They put him in the choir, but the hymns he did not like. So he organized the angels and he led them out on strike. Led them out on strike, Led them out on strike. He organized the angels and he led them out on strike!

One day when God was walking around heaven to medidate. Who should he see but Harry chalkin' slogans on the gate? Chalkin' slogans on the gate, slogans on the gate Who should he see but Harry chalkin' slogans on the gate? Well, they brought him up for trial before the Holy Ghost. For spreadin' disaffection amongst the heavenly hosts. Amongst the heavenly hosts, amongst the heavenly hosts. For spreadin' disaffection amongst the heavenly hosts.

The Limeliters

Secret communications with the Soviet Union[]

In Operation MASK (1934–1937), an MI5 spy infiltrated the party, and was for a time Pollitt's assistant and a clandestine radio operator. This allowed John Tiltman and his colleagues to crack the code and decrypt, for a few years, messages between Moscow and some of its foreign parties, such as the CPGB. They revealed the Comintern's close supervision of the Communist Party and Pollitt. Among other things, Pollitt was instructed to refute news leaks about a Stalinist purge. Some messages were addressed to code names, while others were signed by Pollitt himself. In his transmissions to Moscow, Pollitt regularly pleaded for more funding from the Soviet Union. 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 English 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. "At great inconvenience went to Paris to speak in the election campaign". Pollitt went on to complain that he was "kept sitting two days and comrades refused to allow me to speak. Such treatment as I received in Paris is a scandal".[34][35][36]

Publications by Harry Pollitt[]

  • Hands Off Russia, article in Monthly Report of the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron and Steel Shipbuilders, July 1919.
  • A Cry From Russia, article in Monthly Report of the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron and Steel Shipbuilders, September 1921.
  • The Communist Party on Trial: Harry Pollitt's Defence. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1925].
  • Pollitt's Reply to Citrine. London: National Minority Movement, Aug. 1928.
  • The Workers' Charter. London: National Minority Movement, n.d. [c. 1929].
  • Struggle or Starve. London: National Minority Movement, n.d. [c. 1931].
  • Which Way for the Workers? Harry Pollitt, Communist Party, versus Fenner Brockway, Independent Labour Party, London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [c. 1932].
  • Towards Soviet Power. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1933].
  • Into Action! The Communist Party's Proposals for the National Unity Congress, February, 1934. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1934].
  • The Way Forward: Harry Pollitt's Speech at the Great United Front Congress at Bermondsey, February 24th, 1934 (Opening the Discussion on Main Resolution). London: National Congress and March Council, n.d. [1934].
  • Labour and War. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [c. 1935].
  • We Can Stop War! London: n.p. [Communist Party of Great Britain], n.d. [1935].
  • Dynamite in the Dock: Harry Pollitt's Evidence Before the Arms Inquiry Commission. London: n.p. [Communist Party of Great Britain], n.d. [1935].
  • Harry Pollitt Speaks: A Call to All Workers. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1935].
  • Unity Against the National Government: Harry Pollitt's Speech at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1935].
  • The Labour Party and the Communist Party. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1935].
  • Forward! London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1936].
  • I Accuse Baldwin. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1936].
  • The Path to Peace. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1936].
  • Unity, Peace, and Security: Pollitt's Reply to Morrison. London: n.p. [Communist Party of Great Britain], n.d. [1936].
  • Save Spain from Fascism. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Aug. 1936.
  • Spain and the TUC. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Sept. 1936.
  • Arms for Spain. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Oct. 1936.
  • A War Was Stopped! The Story of the Dockers and the 'Jolly George.' London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1936].
  • The Unity Campaign. With Stafford Cripps (Socialist League) and James Maxton (ILP). London: n.p. [Communist Party of Great Britain], Jan. 1937.
  • The Truth About Trotskyism: Moscow Trial, January 1937. With R. Palme Dutt. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Feb. 1937.
  • Save Peace! Aid Spain. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, May 1937.
  • Salute to the Soviet Union. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Oct. 1937.
  • Labour's Way Forward. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Nov. 1937.
  • Pollitt Visits Spain. Foreword by J.B.S. Haldane. London: International Brigade Wounded and Dependants' Aid Fund, Feb. 1938.
  • Austria. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, March 1938.
  • Czecho-Slovakia and Britain. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, May 1938.
  • For Unity in London. With Ted Bramley. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [June 1938].
  • Czechoslovakia. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Sept. 1938. Reissued Oct. 1938 as Czechoslovakia Betrayed.
  • Defence of the People. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Feb. 1939.
  • Spain: What Next? London: Communist Party of Great Britain, March 1939.
  • Can Conscription Save Peace? London: Communist Party of Great Britain, May 1939.
  • Will It Be War? London: Communist Party of Great Britain, July 1939.
  • How to Win the War. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Sept. 1939.
  • The War and the Labour Movement. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, June 1940.
  • The War and the Workshop: Letters to Bill No. 1. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, July 1940.
  • What Is Russia Going to Do? Letters to Bill No. 2. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, [July 1940].
  • Wages — A Policy. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Dec. 1940.
  • Tom Mann, Born April 15, 1856, Died March 13, 1941: A Tribute by Harry Pollitt. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [March 1941].
  • Smash Hitler Now! London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [c. June 1941].
  • A Call for Arms. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1941].
  • Britain's Chance Has Come. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [c. Oct. 1941].
  • The World in Arms. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [1942].
  • Into Battle! The Call of May Day 1942. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, April 1942.
  • The Way to Win: Decisions of the National Conference of the Communist Party of Great Britain, May 1942. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d. [May 1942].
  • Speed the Second Front. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, July 1942.
  • Deeds — Not Words! London: Communist Party of Great Britain, Oct. 1942.
  • Malaya: Stop the War! London: Communist Party of Great Britain, 28th January 1952.

Footnotes[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d "A Tribute to Harry Pollitt 1890 - 1960". Blue Plaques. Tameside District Council. Retrieved 5 April 2011.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b Meddick, Simon; Payne, Liz; Katz, Phil (2020). Red Lives: Communists and the Struggle for Socialism. UK: Manifesto Press Cooperative Limited. p. 178. ISBN 978-1-907464-45-4.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c Meddick, Simon; Payne, Liz; Katz, Phil (2020). Red Lives: Communists and the Struggle for Socialism. UK: Manifesto Press Cooperative Limited. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-907464-45-4.
  4. ^ Ruth Frow; Frow, Edmund (1978). The Communist Party in Manchester 1920-1926. Manchester: North West History Group, CPGB.
  5. ^ Mahon, J. (1976). Harry Pollitt: A Biography. London: Lawrence and Wishart. p. 121. ISBN 978-0-85315-327-6.
  6. ^ Davenport-Hines, R. (2018). Enemies Within: Communists, the Cambridge Spies and the Making of Modern Britain. London: HarperCollins Publishers. p. 157. ISBN 978-0-00-751668-1.
  7. ^ Durham, Martin (April 1985). "British Revolutionaries and the Suppression of the Left in Lenin's Russia, 1918-1924". Journal of Contemporary History. Sage Publications, Inc. 20 (2): 207. doi:10.1177/002200948502000201. JSTOR 260531. S2CID 159699014. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  8. ^ McIlroy, John (August 2006). "The Establishment of Intellectual Orthodoxy and the Stalinization of British Communism 1928-1933". Past & Present. Oxford University Press (192): 189. JSTOR 4125202. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  9. ^ Durham, Martin (April 1985). "British Revolutionaries and the Suppression of the Left in Lenin's Russia, 1918-1924". Journal of Contemporary History. Sage Publications, Inc. 20 (2): 214–215. doi:10.1177/002200948502000201. JSTOR 260531. S2CID 159699014. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  10. ^ Johnstone, Monty (Spring 1997). "The CPGB, the Comintern and the War, 1939-194: Filling in the Blank Spots". Science & Society. Guilford Press. 61 (1): 31. JSTOR 40403603. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  11. ^ Redman, Joseph "The British Stalinists and the Moscow Trials", Labour Review, 3:2, March–April 1958
  12. ^ Thorpe, Andrew (October 1998). "Stalinism and British Politics". History. Wiley. 83 (272): 615. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.00089. JSTOR 24424503. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  13. ^ Newsinger, John (2018). "Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left". Pluto Press: 39. doi:10.2307/j.ctt21kk1wk.7. JSTOR j.ctt21kk1wk.6. Retrieved 23 March 2021. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. ^ Newsinger, John (2018). "Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left". Pluto Press: 149. doi:10.2307/j.ctt21kk1wk.7. JSTOR j.ctt21kk1wk.6. Retrieved 23 March 2021. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  15. ^ Harker, Ben (Spring 2013). "The Trumpet of the Night': Interwar Communists on BBC Radio". History Workshop Journal. Oxford University Press. 75 (75): 81–100. doi:10.1093/hwj/dbs035. JSTOR 43299047. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  16. ^ John Mahon, Harry Pollitt: A Biography Lawrence & Wishart, Limited, 1976 ISBN 0853153272 (p. 193)
  17. ^ Newsinger, John (2018). "Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left". Pluto Press: 57. doi:10.2307/j.ctt21kk1wk.7. JSTOR j.ctt21kk1wk.7. Retrieved 23 March 2021. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  18. ^ Collection Catalogues and Descriptions, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, archived from the original on 13 January 2015, retrieved 5 February 2015
  19. ^ Morgan, Kevin (February 2009). "Militarism and Anti-Militarism: Socialists, Communists and Conscription in France and Britain 1900-1940". Past & Present. Oxford University Press (22): 239. JSTOR 25580923. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  20. ^ John Mahon, Harry Pollitt: A Biography (p. 236)
  21. ^ Childs, David (April 1977). "The British Communist Party and the War, 1939-41: Old Slogans Revived". Journal of Contemporary History. Sage Publications, Inc. 12 (2): 245. doi:10.1177/002200947701200202. JSTOR 260215. S2CID 159508420. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  22. ^ Childs, David (April 1977). "The British Communist Party and the War, 1939-41: Old Slogans Revived". Journal of Contemporary History. Sage Publications, Inc. 12 (2): 251. doi:10.1177/002200947701200202. JSTOR 260215. S2CID 159508420. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  23. ^ Childs, David (April 1977). "The British Communist Party and the War, 1939-41: Old Slogans Revived". Journal of Contemporary History. Sage Publications, Inc. 12 (2): 242. doi:10.1177/002200947701200202. JSTOR 260215. S2CID 159508420. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  24. ^ Johnstone, Monty (Spring 1997). "The CPGB, the Comintern and the War, 1939-194: Filling in the Blank Spots". Science & Society. Guilford Press. 61 (1): 33. JSTOR 40403603. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  25. ^ Johnstone, Monty (Spring 1997). "The CPGB, the Comintern and the War, 1939-194: Filling in the Blank Spots". Science & Society. Guilford Press. 61 (1): 42–43. JSTOR 40403603. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  26. ^ Childs, David (April 1977). "The British Communist Party and the War, 1939-41: Old Slogans Revived". Journal of Contemporary History. Sage Publications, Inc. 12 (2): 240. doi:10.1177/002200947701200202. JSTOR 260215. S2CID 159508420. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  27. ^ Thorpe, Andrew (October 1998). "Stalinism and British Politics". History. Wiley. 83 (272): 616. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.00089. JSTOR 24424503. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  28. ^ Pollitt, Harry (1952). Malaya: Stop the War!. London: Communist Party of Great Britain.
  29. ^ Thorpe, Andrew (October 1998). "Stalinism and British Politics". History. Wiley. 83 (272): 608–627. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.00089. JSTOR 24424503. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  30. ^ Jump up to: a b Thorpe, Andrew (October 1998). "Stalinism and British Politics". History. Wiley. 83 (272): 617. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.00089. JSTOR 24424503. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  31. ^ Winnington, Alan (1986). Breakfast with Mao: Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent. London: Lawrence and Wishart. p. 251. ISBN 0853156522.
  32. ^ Fallon, Donal (6 January 2016). "Flying fists, pokers and chairs. Harry Pollitt's visit to Rathmines". Come Here To Me!.
  33. ^ "THE LIMELITERS - HARRY POLLITT LYRICS". Retrieved 13 January 2012.
  34. ^ West, Nigel (2005). Mask: MI5's Penetration of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Psychology Press. pp. 108 et seq.
  35. ^ Romerstein, Herbert; Eric Breindel (1 October 2001). The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors. Regnery Publishing. pp. 86–88.
  36. ^ Andrew, Christopher M. (3 November 2009). Defend the realm: the authorized history of MI5. Random House Digital, Inc. pp. 142, 148, 160, 176, 179, 180, 404, 1023.

References[]

  • Cornwell, Susan, UK archives offer insight into 1930s Soviet Union, Reuters 9 October 1997.
  • Morgan, Kevin (2004). "Pollitt, Harry (1890–1960)". In H. C. G. Matthew; Brian Harrison; Lawrence Goldman (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online January 2011 ed.). Oxford: OUP. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35560. Retrieved 12 January 2012. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  • Redman, Joseph, The British Stalinists and the Moscow Trials, Labour Review Vol.3 No.2, March–April 1958.
  • Smith, Michael, How Communists in Britain followed the Moscow line, Electronic Telegraph, 10 October 1997.
  • Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Much of this article was taken nearly verbatim from it).

External links[]

Party political offices
Preceded by
J. R. Campbell 		General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain
1929 – 1939 		Succeeded by
Rajani Palme Dutt
Preceded by
Rajani Palme Dutt 		General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain
1941 – 1956 		Succeeded by
John Gollan


Retrieved from ""