How a small political party shaped British trade unions and radical culture for decades

Cultures · Published 29 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Founded in 1920, the Communist Party of Great Britain never achieved mass electoral success, yet it exerted immense influence over the nation's industrial and social landscape. From organizing anti-fascist resistance to pioneering anti-racist politics, the party operated as a powerful, often clandestine, force within the British trade union movement.

The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) emerged in July 1920 from a merger of Marxist groups, including the British Socialist Party. While it struggled to win parliamentary seats, it built a dedicated cadre of militants in heavy engineering, mining, and textiles. By the 1940s, the party reached its peak membership of approximately 60,000. Its influence was disproportionately high in the labour movement, where members held key leadership roles in major unions like the National Union of Mineworkers and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers.

The party’s history was defined by its complex relationship with Moscow and its internal ideological shifts. After the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the CPGB suffered a massive loss of members, including many intellectuals. Following this, it increasingly functioned as a pressure group, using its 'Broad Left' strategy to influence Labour Party policy through trade union officials. By the late 1960s, the party was deeply polarized between 'Tankies'—who remained loyal to Soviet interventions—and those moving toward Eurocommunism. This tension, alongside the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, ultimately led the leadership to disband the party in favor of Democratic Left.

Beyond electoral politics, the CPGB left a lasting cultural footprint. It founded the Daily Worker in 1930, later renamed the Morning Star, and its members were instrumental in organizing resistance against the British Union of Fascists at the 1936 Battle of Cable Street. The party also championed anti-colonialism and racial equality, with member Claudia Jones founding the Notting Hill Carnival. Even as its electoral prospects faded—famously mocked as pursuing the 'British Road to Lost Deposits'—the party’s legacy persisted through the activists it trained and the social movements it helped catalyze, such as Mark Ashton’s 1984 formation of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.

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