Last week the
Communist Party of Great
Britain changed its name to the Democratic Left, effectively spelling
the end of an era. Dr
George Barnsby, a local author and
lifelong
member of the Party, traces the rise and fall of Communism in
Wolverhampton.
With the disappearance of the Communist
Party a part of Wolverhampton history also ends.
This party emerged in 1920 in the wake
of the disillusion with the slaughter of World War I and enthusiasm for
the Russian Revolution.
When a 'home for for heroes' failed to
materialise and servicemen returned to the dole there was widespread
discontent in Wolverhampton as elsewhere.
Vast meetings and deputations to the
Board of Guardians and local Council demanded public works such as pit
mound levelling for the unemployed.
At one such meeting a Communist, James Stewart, was charged under emergency legislation with 'using words likely to cause disaffection among the civilian population' and sentenced to one month's hard labour.
The first well-known local Communist was an ex-serviceman, Albert Darke. In the great May Day demonstration on the eve of the General Strike in 1926 Darke was arrested for wearing his RAF uniform with red badges and holding a poster saying 'don't shoot' addressed to soldiers who might be used in the forthcoming strike. He was fined £6.
Darke was an engineer who could, like many others, find no work in
his own town and eventually worked for Russian Oil Products.
There had been a great outcry from Tory members when Wolverhampton had
been one of the first councils to buy Russian oil at a fraction of the
price previously paid.
Darke dies in a motorcycle accident on
Christmas Day 1932.
In the 1930s Communists played an
important part in the struggles against fascism abroad and appeasement
at home.
During the Spanish war against Franco
and his German and Italian allies large amounts were raised for food
for Spain. Spanish children were brought here for holidays.
More than 20 volunteers from Birmingham
and the Black Country fought for Republican Spain in the British
battalion of the International Brigade and among those killed was
Walsall communist 'Dusty' Bennett.
After Munich in 1938 when Chamberlain
handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler war became inevitable. Stalin signed a
Non-Intervention Pact with Hitler and Communist support declined,
although a powerful movement for a People's Convention for the sacking
of Chamberlain was widely supported in Wolverhampton including a packed
meeting in the Civic Hall addressed by the Dean of Canterbury.
With Hitler's attack on Russia in 1941
Communist influence rose to its highest level with calls for a Second
Front to support the Russians and increased production at home.
Communists initiated the Shop Stewards
Movement and Joint Production Committees which led to such events as
the Productivity Conference in Wolverhampton in 1942 when the main
factories including Boulton Paul, Meadows, Guys etc. reported on
progress in worker/management co-operation to increase output.
Left-wing domination of the shop
stewards movement continued until at the height of the Cold War in the
1960s the News of the World launched an extraordinary witch hunt
claiming that Communists in key positions at the important arms factory
of Boulton Paul were security risks.
At the first local election after the
war K Brutton was elected to Wolverhampton town council as a Communist
and Doris Bootman polled nearly 1,000 votes.
Influential Communists during this heady
period were George Crane who became a national AEU organiser, and Bert
Harris the convenor at Boulton Paul, Frank Ward who became the first
Communist representative on the town's education committee.
As the Cold War took hold Communist
support plummetted.
In the 1960s there was a revival. Apart
from its continuing industrial influence it became electorally the
third part, putting up four or five candidates a year and polling more
votes than the Liberal Party. In 1966 when the borough was enlarged
Communists contested every seat.
But its policies of low council house
rents, Comprehensive schools for the town, health centres and cuts in
arms expenditure failed to crack the two-party system.
The party also played the leading role
in protests against the Vietnam war and for the banning of nuclear
weapons.
More importantly, perhaps, it was the
only party to welcome immigrants to the town, strenuously opposed
racism and initiated the Racial Harmony Committe in the town which is
now the Race Equality Council.
When the party opposed the Russian
invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan it was too little too late
and since the collapse of the Soviet Union the pary locally has
dwindled to a dozen or so, with two splinter groups.
Whether it can survive as the Democratic
Left only time will tell. But the Good Old Cause of control by working
people of the economic resources whereby they live will continue in the
search for a society that will end war and mass unemployment.
George
Barnsby was, for 20 years, Secretary of Wolverhampton's Communist
Party.
He is the author of 'Social
Conditions in the Black Country in the 19th Century', 'The Working
Class Movement in the Black Country 1750-1867' and the 'History of the
Wolverhampton Trades Union Council', among others.